Why We Study Human Origin

Susman, Randall.

"Why We Study Human Origins."

Callipoe Sept. 1999: 4-5. Print.

In the past people relied on religious teachings and myths to explain the beginning of humanity, they relied on Human origins.

People these days such as myself always have the curiosity of how life was like in the past. The questions that we tend to ask each other or our selves is Why did human come to be, and Why did Hominids survive, Where did we orginate? All the questions are part of the human origin. There is also another answer to all these questions known as the Fossil Record. “The Fossil record  can provide interesting information about the evolution and the history of life on earth such as the way the particular species have lived during a specific geological period and then evolved in time”. (http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Fossil_Record) Fossils can help us learn about how early our ancestors lived and how they adapted to their surroundings, they also give us a good idea of their physical features and behavior. 

Charles Darwin a scientist from the 1800 developed a ground breaking theory called Theory of Evolution by observing plants and animals. This theory is proposing that hominids  have descended from hominids like us. For example we have descended from the homosapians, this is what Charles Darwin is trying to say. "Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations". (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html)

 

Henry Huxley a well known scientist had proposed that apes and humans anatomically more similar than apes and monkeys. In this sentence anatomically is referring to the anatomy of apes and humans compared against apes and monkeys. Interestingly enough during the time periods of Huxley and Darwin there were no fossils found of our ancestors therefor their theory's were not proven by any evidence. Later on during 1925 Raymond Dart dicovered the first fossils, they were first found in Africa. This had proved to historians that our ancestors were bipedal. This is the theory that we no know today, we were descendants of Homosaphiens and Homosaphiens are descendants of other hominids. It just keeps going for another 6 million year and maybe even more.

I last thing, I would love to share this funny advertisement by Ogilvy Pr about human evolution.