Human Evolution In Africa

Evolution In Africa

Humans, as we consider ourselves, evolved in Africa. Not entirely, but from early primates to our present state. Many people dispute this fact, despite astounding evidence supporting the theory, for various reasons. Showing all the genetic, paleological, and geological proof, I find it very hard indeed to contradict the evidence.

True, humans didn’t evolve entirely in Africa. As a matter of fact the first known ancestors of humans where found in North America, in the Utah Valley. These animals where nothing more than a shrew in the shadow of the dinosaurs. However, with the event that killed the dinosaurs, they where finally allowed to reproduce and spread. At this time, according to isotope dating, the world was averaging 4 times warmer than it now is. As time went on, the small mammal had spread throughout Eurasia. All of Eurasia then was covered in tropical forests. Primates evolved in what is now the Indian Subcontinent.

From their placement in India, then still lowland, primates spread throughout the world once more. Some returned to North America, only to be wiped out by rodents already living there. Others spread to Europe and the Middle East.

By this time, Africa had just split from marsupial overrun Gondwanaland. About a million years later it reached the Middle East, and primates moved in. By now the world had cooled enough that the primates in Europe had been decimated to near extinction. They also migrated south, for the Mediterranean Sea was at that time dry lowland. Now almost all of the primates left in the world were in Africa, and the only marsupial that wasn’t wiped out was the opossum. Primates and large cats now ruled, with rodents scarce, which meant that the primates had to adapt to keep from becoming lunch. In light of this, natural selection shows only those primates with larger bodies and higher intelligence survived.

The once rodent sized primates, lemurs, now only exist in Madagascar, which had separated from Africa in the early Eocene Epoch, and where there were no predators to be found. In most of Africa, however, the primates got larger. They shifted evolutionary gears to start becoming apes and hominids.

The first apes to evolve, Afropithecus was very small by ape standards. They were dumb tree swingers, but it was by their appearance that we owe our existence, along with chimps, gorillas, and orangutans. These apes, despite their stupidity, were very successful and spread back to India once more.