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Aristotle in his lost work The State of the Ithacians cited a myth according to which Cephalus was instructed by an oracle to mate with the first female being he should encounter if he wanted to have offspring; Cephalus mated with a she-bear, who then transformed into a human woman and bore him a son, Arcesius. [3]
The Egyptian god Khnum is said to create human children from clay [12] before placing them into their mother's womb. [13] In context, though, Egyptians more generally believed in a cyclical view of time and rebirth. This meant humans were seen as part of a continuous cycle of creation and destruction, not necessarily originating from a single pair.
The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.
Anatomically modern humans appear in Africa. [103] [104] [105] Around 50 ka they start colonising the other continents, replacing Neanderthals in Europe and other hominins in Asia. 70 ka Genetic bottleneck in humans (Toba catastrophe theory). 40 ka Last giant monitor lizards (Varanus priscus) die out. 35-25 ka Extinction of Neanderthals.
A Homo fossil was found near some Oldowan tools, and its age was noted at 2.3 million years old, suggesting that maybe the Homo species did indeed create and use these tools. It is a possibility but does not yet represent solid evidence. [195]
The only human fossils found before the discovery of Java Man in the 1890s were either of anatomically modern humans or of Neanderthals that were too close, especially in the critical characteristic of cranial capacity, to modern humans for them to be convincing intermediates between humans and other primates. [108]
The discovery of human antiquity was a major achievement of science in the middle of the 19th century, and the foundation of scientific paleoanthropology.The antiquity of man, human antiquity, or in simpler language the age of the human race, are names given to the series of scientific debates it involved, which with modifications continue in the 21st century.
Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature is an 1863 book by Thomas Henry Huxley, in which he gives evidence for the evolution of humans and apes from a common ancestor. It was the first book devoted to the topic of human evolution, and discussed much of the anatomical and other evidence.