Human exists how long

Human groups that encountered each other probably swapped more than just genes, too. Neanderthals living in modern-day France roughly 50, years ago knew how to start a fire , according to a Nature paper on which Sorensen was the lead author. Fire-starting is a key skill that different human groups could have passed along to each other—possibly even one that Neanderthals taught to some modern humans.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. Forests are shrinking at a startling pace — every year, we lose a swath of forest the size of Massachusetts viii. All of these problems are exacerbated by an ever-growing human population, which has more than doubled in the last fifty years.

But while climate change is one of the most visible parts of the Anthropocene, it does not paint the whole picture of our influence. Everything from damming rivers to paving roads to illuminating public spaces has changed the physical makeup of the planet in some aspect, creating a world that has truly been shaped by humans.

Human creativity has produced some incredible achievements. We have created the technology to produce high-yielding food crops with the capacity to support more human life than ever before.

We can plant crops far from water sources, control the temperature inside our living spaces, enjoy leisure time and luxuries, and walk on the moon. We have invented cures for diseases that were once catastrophic. We can travel anywhere on Earth at incredible speeds in cars, ships, and airplanes.

These innovations in transportation and communication have given us the means to connect with our fellow human beings, learn about new cultures, and maintain relationships all around the globe.

Perhaps most importantly, we have self-awareness of the impact of our activities. Scientific methods can help us comprehend how emissions from our vehicles and factories are causing Earth to warm, and how that warming will affect everything from sea levels to biodiversity. We can study how the use of certain fertilizers on land will destroy marine ecosystems thousands of miles away.

We are aware of the finiteness of Earth's natural resources and can use this knowledge to analyze the short- and long-term effects of their gradual depletion.

Having this self-awareness along with our creative problem-solving will be critical to helping repair some of the negative effects of the Anthropocene, and will help us to be conscious of those effects into the future.

Changing climate is not a unique feature of the Anthropocene. The last six million years when hominins began to appear in the fossil record were particularly volatile and saw many different shifts in environments.

The key to human survival in these settings was an extraordinary ability of our ancestors to alter their behavior and the world around them. Our success in these times was largely due to the evolution over time of a number of traits that allowed us to be more adaptable to a large variety of environmental conditions.

The first bipedal hominins were able to live both on the ground and in trees, which gave them an advantage as the habitat oscillated between forests and grasslands. The ability of early humans to make and use tools, including the control of fire, allowed them to more easily access food by scraping meat off of bones more efficiently, crushing bones for the marrow inside, and obtaining new plant foods such as nutritious tubers and roots from underground.

Tool use also enabled early hominins to diversify their diet, so they had plenty of options when certain plants and animals went extinct. And with a larger and more complex brain, early humans gained the capacity for everything from language to creative problem-solving.

Other species in our evolutionary tree had features that were more specialized to one particular environment, and they were very successful for long periods of time in those environments. Yet these localized features restricted their ability to live in new conditions, limiting how effectively they could inhabit new geographic zones or could adjust to unusual climatic shifts.

If they were unable to adapt to new conditions or change their location significantly, they died out. A good example of that are the Neanderthals, or Homo neanderthalensis. Members of this species had bodies that were well suited for cold climates; their short, stocky bodies, large noses, and their ability to make clothing were all specialized features for successful living in the cold. Approximately 4 million years ago, the first Australopithecus evolved: the first members of the Hominina subtribe a taxonomic classification more specific than family but less specific than genus.

Shortly thereafter, the first evidence of stone tool use appears: presently at 3. Ples" found in Australopithecus was the dominant hominid throughout Africa for nearly 2 million years, until the rise of Homo habilis. A critical evolutionary step happened a little more than 2 million years ago, as our hominid ancestors faced food shortages.

One evolutionarily successful approach was to develop stronger jaws, which gave us the capability to eat foods like nuts that were otherwise inaccessible. But another approach was also successful: to develop weaker jaws and larger brains, enabling us to access the food. While both groups survived for a time, the larger-brained group was more adaptable to changes, and they continued to survive.

This is the evolutionary path that we think led to the development of the genus Homo, which first arose about 2. Homo habilis, known colloquially as "handy man," had larger brains than their Australopithecus counterparts and displayed far more widespread tool use. The group of hominids shown here includes many of our direct ancestors and evolutionary cousins. About 1. This human ancestor not only walked fully upright, but had much larger brains than Homo habilis: nearly twice as large, on average.

Homo erectus became the first direct human ancestor to leave Africa, and the first to display evidence of using fire. Homo habilis was likely driven to extinction more than a million years ago, as was the last Australopithecus.

Across the world, new examples of the genus Homo emerged, including Homo antecessor in Europe which may be an evolved habilis or erectus, or an early form of heidelbergensis about 1.

Approximately , years ago, the earliest evidence for cooking appears; about , years ago, the first evidence for clothing appears. The oldest fossil remnants of Homo sapiens now date back to ,, years ago, and were This find, dating back to only , pushes back our species' origin earlier than the development of the Neanderthals, and suggest that we didn't evolve only in East Africa, as previously believed. Approximately , years ago, the first Homo sapiens — anatomically modern humans — arose alongside our other hominid relatives.

It is unknown whether we descended directly from Homo erectus, heidelbergensis, or antecessor, although Neanderthals, which came slightly later at , years ago, most certainly came from Homo heidelbergensis. Modern speech is thought to have arisen almost as soon as Homo sapiens did. It took This triggered feedback cycles. As new technologies appeared and spread — better weapons, clothing, shelters — human numbers could increase further, accelerating cultural evolution again.

Numbers drove culture, culture increased numbers, accelerating cultural evolution, on and on, ultimately pushing human populations to outstrip their ecosystems, devastating the megafauna and forcing the evolution of farming. Finally, agriculture caused an explosive population increase, culminating in civilisations of millions of people. Now, cultural evolution kicked into hyperdrive.

Artefacts reflect culture, and cultural complexity is an emergent property. Like networking millions of processors to make a supercomputer, we increased cultural complexity by increasing the number of people and the links between them.

So our societies and world evolved rapidly in the past , years, while our brains evolved slowly. We expanded our numbers to almost 8 billion , spread across the globe, reshaped the planet. We did it not by adapting our brains but by changing our cultures. And much of the difference between our ancient, simple hunter-gatherer societies and modern societies just reflects the fact that there are lots more of us and more connections between us.

Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Longrich , University of Bath. Author Nicholas R.