Mythologies of Where We Come From?

Where did we come from? Asking about our origins is something most people do as soon as they can talk. “Mommy, where do babies come from?” is a question that parents dread. The way parents answer this question has an impact on how children see themselves and other people. As adults, the question of “where did we come from” still has a major impact on how we view the rest of the world. Certainly, we know how we were born, and how we grew out of childhood. What we hunger for is an understanding of how we, as human beings, actually began.

Ask a large number of people, “Where did we come from?” and you will get a large number of answers. Once we sort through these answers, we see that they basically fall into two sides. Some believe that human beings are the end result of lucky circumstances – that life began as an accident and became more complex through sheer chance. Others believe that we were deliberately made as we are by an all-powerful creator. A few believe in some combination of the other two. They respond to “where did we come from?” with a combination of random chance and deliberate intervention. Still, for all intents, the two opinions are that we exist due to “chance” or we exist due to “purpose.”

Which is the truth? Those who believe in evolution believe that all life began as an accident. The assumption is that conditions were just right to make random molecules join together, begin replicating themselves, and eventually blossom into a perfectly balanced ecosystem. Evolutionists are reluctant to admit it, but this opinion presents quite a few problems. For example, how does evolution explain morality? If “survival of the fittest” created the world we live in today, why should we counteract that with compassion, mercy, or charity? If the entire purpose of an organism is to reproduce, then isn’t life truly pointless? In evolution’s “oops” universe, once we die it makes no difference to us if we’ve reproduced, accomplished great things, or not. We won’t know, and our DNA can no longer replicate anyway, so it really makes no difference to us. Evolution would not only make major aspects of who we are as human beings irrelevant, it would make them impossible. Any view that assumes blind luck is responsible for humanity is helpless to fill these voids.

WHEN AND WHERE DID HUMANS FIRST APPEAR ON EARTH?

According to recent findings, the original Hominids emerged (or arrived) on planet earth between 5 and 7 million years ago in Africa, when a handful of mature apes felt it was high time to begin walking upright.

As humans, we are members of the Hominidae, which includes great apes, gorillas, chimpanzees, and human beings. A Hominine is a member of the tribe Homininae, which includes gorillas, chimps, and humans. A Hominin is specific to the family Hominini, which excludes all the other Hominidae, except chimps and humans. Our ancient Hominid cousins, who evolved into Homo from the genus Australopithecus, may have appeared as late as 2-3 million years ago.

It wasn’t until around 200,000 years ago that modern humans took a cue from Homo Erectus, the “upright man,” and became the dominant Hominid species here on Earth. While their journeys began in Africa, these Hominins quickly moved toward Asia, Europe, Scandinavia, and eventually, the rest of the world.

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. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism and language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, which indicate that human evolution was not linear but a web.

The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, evolutionary, anthropology, primatology, archaeology, paleontology, neurobiology, ethology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, embryology and genetics. Genetic studies show that primates diverged from other mammals about 85 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period, and the earliest fossils appear in the Paleocene, around 55 million years ago.

Within the superfamily Hominoidea, the family Hominidae (great apes) diverged from the family Hylobatidae (gibbons) some 15–20 million years ago; subfamily Homininae (African apes) diverged from Ponginae (orangutans[a]) about 14 million years ago; the tribe Hominini (including humans, Australopithecus, and chimpanzees) parted from the tribe Gorillini (gorillas) between 8–9 million years ago; and, in turn, the subtribes Hominina (humans and extinct biped ancestors) and Panina (chimpanzees) separated 4–7 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago.

Where Did Humans First Appear?

Early humans are thought to have evolved between 6 and 2 million years ago in eastern and southern Africa.
Humans did not walk into the Americas until about 13,000 years ago, and are thought to have crossed a land bridge between Asia and North America.
Evolution shows we share a common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas that lived millions of years ago.

Where do we come from? Many different groups of people have their own theories about the origins of humans. Science shows that human evolution goes back for millions of years on Earth. The very first humans are thought to have evolved in Africa. There are fossils of early humans showing we lived between 6 and 2 million years ago that have been found on this continent, and researchers think that hominids, or human-like beings, diverged from other primates during this time in eastern and southern Africa.

Many scientists now believe there were somewhere between 15 and 20 different species of early humans alive on the planet.