Human Origins

7.5 Ma – 10 ka58 items

deep timehumans
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, from the museum above it, 2009. Photo: Noel Feans. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, from the museum above it, 2009. Photo: Noel Feans. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Seven million years of relatives

From the first apes that may have walked upright to the last Ice Age. For most of that time several kinds of human lived at once. We have been the only one for a few tens of thousands of years, and we still carry the others’ DNA.

How to read it

  • Species as bands — each hominin runs from its oldest to its youngest known fossil, so the bands overlap wherever two kinds of human shared the planet

  • Named fossils — Lucy, Turkana Boy, the Mauer jaw — sit inside their species’ band

  • Every site is pinned where it was dug up, from Chad and the Rift Valley to Siberia, Flores, Lake Mungo and New Mexico

Threads to follow

  • evolution — the species bands

  • migration — out of Africa, twice and more

  • technology — stone tools, fire and wood

  • art — engraving, ochre and cave painting

  • genetics — what ancient DNA revealed

A band’s ends are the fossil record’s, not the species’: every new find can stretch one. Dates are in years before present and carry the uncertainty the dating papers give; epochs follow the International Chronostratigraphic Chart.

It is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject. — Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871

Items

  1. Sahelanthropus tchadensis

    ≈ 400 thousand years · Toros-Menalla, Djurab Desert, Chad

  2. Messinian (latest Miocene)

    ≈ 1.91 million years

  3. Orrorin tugenensis

    Lukeino Formation, Tugen Hills, Kenya

  4. Ardipithecus

    ≈ 1.5 million years

  5. Pliocene

    ≈ 2.75 million years

  6. Ardi

    Aramis, Middle Awash, Ethiopia

  7. Australopithecus anamensis

    ≈ 400 thousand years

  8. Australopithecus afarensis

    ≈ 900 thousand years

  9. Laetoli footprints

    Laetoli, Tanzania

  10. Australopithecus africanus

    ≈ 1.2 million years

  11. Lomekwi 3 stone tools

    Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya

  12. Lucy

    Hadar, Afar, Ethiopia

  13. Ledi-Geraru jaw

    Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia

  14. Paranthropus

    ≈ 1.5 million years

  15. Taung Child

    Buxton limeworks, Taung, South Africa

  16. Pleistocene

    ≈ 2.57 million years

  17. Oldowan tools at Gona

    Gona, Afar, Ethiopia

  18. Homo habilis

    ≈ 1 million years

  19. Homo erectus

    ≈ 1.78 million years

  20. Nutcracker Man

    Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

  21. Dmanisi skulls

    Dmanisi, Georgia

  22. Earliest handaxes

    Kokiselei, West Turkana, Kenya

  23. Turkana Boy

    Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya

  24. Fire at Wonderwerk Cave

    Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape

  25. Peking Man

    Zhoukoudian Locality 1, near Beijing

  26. Homo heidelbergensis

    ≈ 500 thousand years

  27. Mauer jaw

    Grafenrain sand pit, Mauer, near Heidelberg

  28. Engraved shell at Trinil

    Trinil, Solo River, Java

  29. Wooden structure at Kalambo Falls

    Kalambo Falls, Zambia

  30. Neanderthals

    ≈ 361 thousand years

  31. Sima de los Huesos

    Sima de los Huesos, Sierra de Atapuerca

  32. Homo sapiens

    ≈ 305 thousand years

  33. Homo naledi

    ≈ 99 thousand years · Rising Star cave, Cradle of Humankind

  34. Jebel Irhoud

    Jebel Irhoud, Morocco

  35. Kabwe skull

    Broken Hill mine, Kabwe, Zambia

  36. Omo Kibish I

    Kibish Formation, lower Omo valley, Ethiopia

  37. Denisovans

    ≈ 150 thousand years

  38. Misliya jaw

    Misliya Cave, Mount Carmel

  39. Xiahe jaw

    Baishiya Karst Cave, Xiahe, Gansu

  40. Harbin skull

    Songhua River, Harbin

  41. Last Homo erectus at Ngandong

    Ngandong, Solo River, Java

  42. Homo floresiensis

    ≈ 40 thousand years · Liang Bua, Flores

  43. Denny

    Denisova Cave, Altai Mountains

  44. Out of Africa

    ≈ 20 thousand years

  45. Toba supereruption

    Lake Toba caldera, Sumatra

  46. Blombos Cave drawing

    Blombos Cave, Western Cape

  47. Denisova finger bone

    Denisova Cave, Altai Mountains

  48. Homo luzonensis

    Callao Cave, Cagayan, Luzon

  49. Pig painting at Leang Karampuang

    Leang Karampuang, Maros, Sulawesi

  50. Ust’-Ishim man

    Irtysh riverbank near Ust’-Ishim, Siberia

  51. Lake Mungo burials

    Lake Mungo, New South Wales

  52. Feldhofer Neanderthal

    Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, Neander valley

  53. Neanderthals disappear

  54. Oase 1 jaw

    Peștera cu Oase, near Anina, Romania

  55. Chauvet Cave paintings

    Chauvet Cave, Ardèche

  56. Last Glacial Maximum

    7,500 years

  57. White Sands footprints

    White Sands National Park, New Mexico

  58. Holocene begins