adversary on the head. Yikes! Then his compatriots jump into the act,
brandishing their bone weapons and repeatedly striking the downed
creature. Clearly the poor fellow has been killed. The scene is depicted
as possibly the first time in human history that a hominin willfully
and intentionally kills a conspecific. It is portrayed with dramatic
intensity and depicted as a powerful moment in the history of human
evolution, as it may well have been—even if little or no evidence exists
that such things actually happened!
What has been pieced together of ancient human evolution comes
largely from the study of fossils discovered in eastern and southern
Africa. The oldest fossils considered to be in the category of direct
human ancestor are generally thought to be in the range of five to
six million years old. Hominin fossils have been classified into three
primary groups, or genera: Ardipithecus, Australopithecus, and Homo.
A number of different species names have been introduced over the
years. A few are listed here, in order of those that lived longest ago to
those of more recent eras:
Ardipithecus ramidus ~ 4.4 million years ago
Australopithecus afarensis ~3to4 million years ago
Australopithecus africanus ~2to3 million years ago
Australopithecus robustus ~1to2.5 million years ago
Homo habilis ~ 1.4 to 2.3 million years ago
Homo erectus ~ 200,000 to 1.9 million years ago
Homo neanderthalensis ~ 30,000 to 300,000 years ago
Homo sapiens ~ 200,000 years ago to nowOnly the last in this list, Homo sapiens—our own species—is alive