The earth is a world of life rich in species, the earliest life was born 3.8 billion years ago. Simple primitive life has undergone continuous evolution and evolution, and there are more and more types of life, and it has become more and more complex. Until the emergence of mammals, humans were born after a long period of evolution.
According to the findings of scientists, the ancestors of modern humans are Homo sapiens 100,000 years ago. In the era of Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens was not the only human species on the earth. There were other Denisovans, Neanderthals, Heidelbergs, and Sibranos that evolved from Homo erectus. At least 6 humans.
Since there were at least six kinds of humans on the earth at that time, why did only the ancestors of humans, Homo sapiens, survive in the end? What happened during this period? To understand this problem, we first understand the evolutionary history of life on earth and the evolutionary process of human evolution.
As we said earlier, the most primitive life on Earth was born 3.8 billion years ago. After the birth of primitive life, after billions of years of long evolutionary evolution, it finally ushered in a major explosion 500 million years ago. The explosion of life has enriched the types of life on the earth, and at the same time has entered the cycle of life extinction.
After three mass extinctions, dinosaurs were born 230 million years ago, and mammals were born at the same time as dinosaurs. It’s just that during the 160 million years when dinosaurs dominated the earth, mammals were at the bottom of the food chain due to their small size, far unable to compare with dinosaurs. So they can only come out for food and activities at night.
About 90 million years ago, mammals had undergone evolution and early primates were born, and this time was still the age of dinosaurs. The strength of primates is also not comparable to that of dinosaurs, and survival is not easy. By 65 million years ago, a turning point occurred when an asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers hit the earth.
The impact triggered a drastic ecological change. The dinosaurs could not adapt to this drastic environment and began to extinct on a large scale. The extinction of the dinosaurs gave the earth a large number of ecological niches. After the extinction of dinosaurs, mammals naturally had more chances of survival and made up for the vacant ecological niche. Since then, mammals have officially stepped onto the stage of overlords and replaced dinosaurs.
The rise of mammals laid the foundation for the birth of mankind. After tens of millions of years of development, the common ancestor of humans and monkeys appeared about 25 to 33 million years ago, and this common ancestor was in the subsequent evolutionary process. , Divided into two branches, one branch evolved into monkeys, and the other branch evolved into apes.
By 18-20 million years, the apes continued to differentiate into gibbons and human ancestors. By 6 million years ago, the ancient ancestors of humans continued to differentiate, one evolved into human ancestors, and the other evolved into chimpanzees. This is why the DNA of chimpanzees and humans is the most probing, because we have a common ancestor.
In the following evolutionary years, that is, about 4 million to 1.8 million years ago, human ancestors first evolved into Australopithecus, and later, Australopithecus evolved into Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is the first species that can be called humans. Homo sapiens learned to walk upright and became Homo erectus. Starting from Homo erectus, human ancestors have truly moved on the path of intelligent evolution, freeing their hands and learning. Manufacturing and using tools.
There is no direct relationship between Homo erectus and modern humans, because Homo erectus is only the beginning of human ancestors finally embarking on the evolution of wisdom. In the following evolutionary years, they also differentiated into many kinds of human beings. Homo sapiens is just one of them. The differentiated kinds of human beings live together on the earth and continue to evolve and develop.
Although different races are intelligent beings, there are still some differences in the development and evolution of intelligence. Especially since 100,000 years ago, in addition to Homo sapiens, there were still at least six human species on the earth. These six human species have their own characteristics. They are erected from Africa earlier than the strong Neanderthals. The offspring of human beings are much stronger than Homo sapiens.
According to the research of scientists, a Neanderthal can challenge at least 2 Homo sapiens. In theory, this powerful physique can better adapt to the living environment of the earth, and can better survive in the cruel nature. This is indeed the case. In the era when they coexisted with Homo sapiens, the scale of development of Neanderthals surpassed that of Homo sapiens.
However, because the intelligence of Neanderthals is much worse than that of Homo sapiens, it can be said that Neanderthals are humans with simple minds and limbs. With the continuous development and growth of Homo sapiens, the physical weakness has been compensated by intelligence. In the subsequent struggle for survival, Homo sapiens relied on more developed wisdom to create more powerful tools.
We must know that the main guarantee for human survival in nature is that we have powerful tools. As long as we have more powerful tools, the probability of survival will be higher. So in the later period of Homo sapiens, the development of Homo sapiens is getting better and better and stronger. On the contrary, Neanderthals have always been in a very primitive stage, and the tools they use are still primitive wooden sticks and stones.
The huge gap in tools allowed Homo sapiens to continuously replace Neanderthals and become the master of the earth. In addition, other types of humans have also disappeared for various reasons, and in the end only Homo sapiens remains. After tens of thousands of years of evolution and evolution, Homo sapiens became modern humans and became truly powerful.
Of course, this is just a simple result of our natural evolutionary evolution. But in fact, Homo sapiens, the ancestor of mankind, was able to weed out other races. In addition to natural factors, there may be a more important factor that is war. We must know that there is no room for two tigers in one mountain. There are several types of human beings on the earth. There will naturally be competition among them, and they are unwilling to share the earth with other human beings.
Especially between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, there has been a high probability that there have been many race wars. Although Neanderthals have an absolute advantage in physique, they can only be affected by the more powerful tools of Homo sapiens. Eliminated. Only the human ancestor Homo sapiens remains.
Through the above analysis, we can also see how difficult it is to compete and survive among natural creatures. Scientists once said that the birth of mankind actually has a lot of luck in it. Let’s not talk about the impact of genetic mutations. Take the disaster 65 million years ago as an example. If there was no asteroid impact, then the ecology would change drastically and the dinosaurs would not be extinct.
If the dinosaurs did not go extinct and vacated the niche, then there would be no chance for the weak life of mammals to rise. Mammals cannot rise, and it is difficult for them to evolve into human ancestors. Therefore, the birth of mankind is very grateful to the asteroid 65 million years ago, which completely changed the destiny of mammals.
Of course, for current humans, we do not welcome asteroids to come to Earth again. Because we are already high-level intelligent beings and have entered the age of science and technology. If there is a global ecological disaster, then humans may not be able to survive alone