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Asked by caitiedlad to Amy, Drew, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by yuyang, marks7r2, felicia978.
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Sara Imari Walker answered on 9 Jun 2011:
Hi Caitiedlad, that’s a great question and a really tough one to answer. We can’t definitively say when the first person or even people lived. There are many veiwpoints on this question but the scientifically accepted on is that we come from a common ancestor with chimpazees that lived about 5-7 million years ago (this ancestor is both very different from modern chimps and very different from us). That’s a long time ago! So, its no wonder that we don’t seem too much like chimps anymore. Modern humans appeared on the scene much more recently – about 250,000 to 400,000 years ago in Africa. Pretty cool to think we all have a common origin.
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Drew Rae answered on 9 Jun 2011:
Hi Caitiedlad,
It really is a great question. The very first person was almost certainly born, just like you were. Only their mum and dad weren’t quite human, they were something slightly different. If you go back through lots of generations of mums and dads, eventually you get to a great great great great (lots of greats) grandmother and grandfather of both us and modern apes. Along the way, every now and then the children were just a tiny bit different from their parents.Every now and then they find or dig up fossils which tell us a bit more about one of the steps in between, but there are always gaps where they can only guess exactly what people looked like before they looked like people.
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Julia Griffen answered on 10 Jun 2011:
Sara and Drew have given excellent explanations.
Have some key words to throw about to impress your friends teachers parents etc..
*evolution* is the term to describe the small changes in the next generation/offspring/children of a species which leads to the change of the characterises of a species over time. The process is very slow! Thousands and millions of years as Sara says!
Why? generally due to changes in environment: e.g you may be familiar with giraffes evolved to have long necks to reach the tallest trees. This is because, in the simplest of terms the giraffes with the longest necks would have got more food, survived and had baby giraffes with long necks too! Humans evolved to adapt to their environment.
*darwin* (1809 – 1882) the guy that worked it out! He came up with the idea of evolution. Its worth noting that this was VERY controversial at the time, and contradicted many religious opinions and values of the time.
I found this website very fun when looking up mydates, check it out if you want to find out all the detail!!!
http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darwin200/pages/index.php?page_id=j -
Amy MacQueen answered on 10 Jun 2011:
Hey!
You asked “how” did the first person in the world appear – as Sara said this is a great question and causes a lot of discussion and debate.
Something I find particularly interesting is “why” did the first person (or actually life itself) appear in the world – either something caused them to be there or they arose by chance. This question can’t be answered by science, but its an interesting thing to think about!
😀
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Kimberley Bryon answered on 15 Jun 2011:
As the other scientists have said this is a really complex question that we don’t really know the answer to.
Comments
Sara commented on :
Caitiedlad – one more thing – the general scientific theory that I described is called “Darwinian evolution”, its a pretty massive subject that describes the process of creating new species for all life on Earth! Very amazing to study how diversity in all the animals, plants, fungi, bacteria we see arises from such a process =) Even bacteria evolve – so when you here on the news that a terrible infection has become “resistant to antibiotics” what has really happened is that the bacteria as evolved resistance!
markk98 commented on :
lolololololololol
markk98 commented on :
so what ur sayin is that some random ppl came and told ppl that we wud die in 2012
Sara commented on :
Hi Markk98! Its not necessarily that random people came along and said 2012 was a special date marking the end of the world. Most likely the Mayan calendar was misinterpreted. The end of one cycle in the Mayan calendar is equivalent to the end of our year, or the end of a month in our calendar. Someone likely came along that did not understand the Mayan calendar and decided that since it ended in 2012 that must be significant. Had they studied the calendar in a little more detail they would have realized their mistake and noticed that the Mayan calendar would start again from zero. This would be the equivalent of us deciding 2011 would never come back in 2010 because the calendar for 2010 had an end. Of course we are still here, and printing new calendars every year! This is why we should always be careful and look at all the facts before jumping to conclusions in science!