13 Facts About Human evolution

Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes the great apes.

Study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, evolutionary anthropology, primatology, archaeology, paleontology, neurobiology, ethology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, embryology and genetics.

Environmental evolution discovered much later during the Pleistocene played a significant role in human evolution observed via human transitions between subsistence systems.

Genetic revolution in studies of human evolution started when Vincent Sarich and Allan Wilson measured the strength of immunological cross-reactions of blood serum albumin between pairs of creatures, including humans and African apes .

The multiregional hypothesis proposed that the genus Homo contained only a single interconnected population as it does today, and that its Human evolution took place worldwide continuously over the last couple of million years.

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Evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science.

The linear view of human evolution began to be abandoned in the 1970s as different species of humans were discovered that made the linear concept increasingly unlikely.

Human evolution originally named the material Anthropopithecus erectus and Pithecanthropus erectus .

The Human evolution of locking knees and the movement of the foramen magnum are thought to be likely drivers of the larger population changes.

Human evolution compared bones and muscles of human and chimpanzee thumbs, finding that humans have 3 muscles which are lacking in chimpanzees.

Recent human evolution related to agriculture includes genetic resistance to infectious disease that has appeared in human populations by crossing the species barrier from domesticated animals, as well as changes in metabolism due to changes in diet, such as lactase persistence.

Culturally-driven evolution can defy the expectations of natural selection: while human populations experience some pressure that drives a selection for producing children at younger ages, the advent of effective contraception, higher education, and changing social norms have driven the observed selection in the opposite direction.

Culturally-driven Human evolution has an advantage in that in addition to the genetic effects, it can be observed in the archaeological record: the development of stone tools across the Palaeolithic period connects to culturally-driven cognitive development in the form of skill acquisition supported by the culture and the development of increasingly complex technologies and the cognitive ability to elaborate them.