Jul 24, 2025 · See the article evolution for a full explanation of evolutionary theory, including its main proponents both before and after Darwin, its arousal of both resistance and acceptance in society, and the scientific tools used to investigate the theory and prove its validity.

The process by which one type of living thing develops into another type is called evolution. Modern humans evolved in stages from a series of ancestors, including several earlier forms of humans.

The earliest fossils considered to be remains of hominins (members of the human lineage) date to at least 4 mya in Africa; they include the genus Australopithecus and other forms. The next major evolutionary stage, Homo habilis, inhabited sub-Saharan Africa about 2–1.5 mya.

Jul 24, 2025 · Therefore, it is safe to assume that by about 1.53 mya the uniquely human locomotor and associated cooling systems were basically established. Subsequent alterations in pelvic shape may be related to the passage of larger-brained babies through the birth canal.

As a result, scholarship during the Enlightenment emphasized categorization and soon produced various typologies that described a series of fixed stages of cultural evolution. Most focused on three major stages, but some posited many more categories.

Here is where human history began; numerous early finds of human remains prove this. Primitive man and the great ape have common ancestry, but their paths diverged at some point in history.

Jul 24, 2025 · Human evolution - Miocene, Bipedalism, Adaptations: It is generally agreed that the taproot of the human family shrub is to be found among apelike species of the Middle Miocene Epoch (roughly 16–11.6 mya) or Late Miocene Epoch (11.6–5.3 mya).

Jul 24, 2025 · The unreliability of brain size to predict cognitive competence and ability to survive in challenging environments is underscored by the discovery of a distinctive human sample, dubbed H. floresiensis, in a limestone cave on Flores Island, Indonesia, in 2004.

law of three stages, theory of human intellectual development propounded by the French social theorist Auguste Comte (1798–1857).

Jul 25, 2025 · Human evolution, the process by which human beings developed on Earth from now-extinct primates. The only extant members of the human tribe, Hominini, belong to the species Homo sapiens.