• Question: how did humans appear on earth?

    Asked by to Kate, Joe, Juan, Rosie on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Kate Salmon

      Kate Salmon answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Hi @purplepenguin- humans (Homo sapiens) appeared on earth after millions of years of evolution from monkeys and we still share a common ancestor with gorillas and orang-utans. Current data shows that modern humans evolved from ancient humans from East Africa and spread around the globe ~70 000 years ago. But there were many ancestors before that which showed evidence for intelligence. For example, around 2 million years ago there is evidence that Homo habilis (one of our ancestors) started using tools to cut up animals and eat meat. This was a huge step in intelligence and eating meat also gave them a lot more calories than just eating leaves. This extra energy from eating meat allowed their brains to grow bigger and they became even smarter. You can read more about it here:

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/

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