Maggie+Cherneff

INTRO Many years ago Humans evolved. Most people think that humans evolved from monkeys. Although this is not true, we are very closely related. Monkeys, specifically Chimpanzees, have very similar traits as us, we are both under the category of primates. You can consider them like our distant cousins in the animal family. In the category of primates we are called hominids. Hominids are humans and our recent ancestors.   COMMON ANCESTOR 45 million years ago monkeys and humans shared a common ancestor. A common ancestor is sort of like a parent. Over millions of years those “parents” or that species, evolved into two separate kinds of animals. One went on a path to become monkeys and the other was on the way to becoming modern humans. One of the early species that then evolved into people was called Australopithecines ( aw struh loh pith uh seens ). Australopithecines were similar to apes but somewhat different. Scientists found fossils of them in places such as Africa and believed they lived nearly 3 million years ago. They had larger brains and their day to day life was much different. This early species would live in trees but walk on two legs as well. They most likely lived in grassy lush places and ate mainly vegetarian foods. Although there were other kinds of hominids living at the same time was it was from animals like the Australopithecines that humans evolved.   NEXT GENERATION OF HOMINIDS  Almost two and a half million years ago a new type of hominid appeared. This type of hominid was called homo habilis. These hominids had very advanced brains. Their skulls were large and they had very flat faces. Fossil evidence shows that there were many of these animals living around the world at once. Almost a million years later another type of hominid appeared. This was called homo erectus. Their fossils have been found in Africa, Europe, and Asia. This animal could grow to be as tall as a modern human, they were also bipedal, meaning they could stand on up on two feet.   NEANDERTHALS  Another type of hominid is known as the Neanderthals. Some people think we evolved from them but that is not the case. Neanderthals lived about 230,000 years ago in Europe and west Asia. They were a very advanced species, they had art, clothing, made fires, cared for their elders and paid respects to the dead. They were alive at the same time as other kinds of hominids. Some scientists think that they may have met with the other hominids and that somehow led to the Neanderthals extinction. All Neanderthals died out around 30,000 years ago.   HOMO SAPIENS Modern humans are called homo sapiens. The earliest homo sapiens lived 100,000 to 160,000 years ago in Africa. It wasn’t till sometime between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago did they leave Africa and migrate elsewhere. Of all of the hominids homo sapiens are the only ones that are still around. Early homo sapiens made lots of art, they liked carvings, sculptures, and clothing. This left us good information about what they were like. for more fun and games and info with human evolution check out these sites! http://www.brainpop.com/science/ecologyandbehavior/humanevolution/preview.weml http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/index.html

here is some more articles! http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_sc/hst/hz5fos_CS_1102.pdf  __Holt science and technology cells, heredity, and classification__. Austin, TX: Holt rinehart and winston, 2007.