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Asked by diva to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 13 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by emmagrace, maisha07.
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Tim Millar answered on 13 Jun 2011:
He may have been after the first woman Dalya!
Probably not Adam, but an unanswerable question.
Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon (as far as we know)
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Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Hey, Dalya and Tim… you’re the biologists. Why do *I* have to write the serious answer on this one? 😉
Every living creature is part of an evolutionary tree. Each is slightly different to its parent and grand parent and so on. If you go back far enough, there would have been a point where we would not regard our ancestors as humans, but probably more as apes or, if you go back far enough, some sort of strange prehistoric amphibian creature, or (going back even further) some sort of amoeba thing.
The fact is though, that this is not a sudden change, it is very gradual. In the same way that we look back on our ancestors say, 1 million years ago, and think that they were not human, you can also look back not so far back (say 1000 years) and say that the people living then were. And yet it is all part of the same family tree.
And where do you draw the line.
Well, to a certain extent, there is no line. There was no first woman or man, just a slight variation on what their parents were. In any case, it would be impossible to identify that first individual. They probably didn’t have a name either.
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Sarah Thomas answered on 13 Jun 2011:
ok you guys aren’t going to believe this but I did a science media course a few years ago and I had to make a news clip about the discovery of hominid fossil, said to be the earliest ancestor of humans. The scientists named the skeleton “Ardi”, she was a member of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, and is thought to have walked the earth 4.4 million years ago.
The skeleton was found in Ethiopia, and Ardi was estimated to have stood 4 feet tall and weighed around 50kg. She had an opposable big toe and they said her canines were smaller than apes. They thougth this was an indicator of social development: reduced fighting, pair-bonding etc.
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Tom Crick answered on 13 Jun 2011:
Depends on what you mean by “man”!
I think you probably mean modern humans i.e. homo sapiens; anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, but modern humans behaviourally around 50,000 years ago.
It is very hard to draw a line and say “this is the first one“: take a look at human evolution.
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