Do humans descend from chimpanzees?
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No (both share a common ancestor)
Chimps are our closest living relatives, but not our ancestors. The lineages split some 6 to 7 million years ago; the common ancestor was neither one nor the other.
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What came first in human evolution?
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Upright walking
Lucy walked upright 3.2 million years ago with a chimp-sized brain. The big brain followed millions of years later; the old assumption had it exactly backwards.
Foto: Momotarou2012 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Which 3.6-million-year-old tracks in Tanzania prove upright walking?
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The Laetoli footprints
At least three individuals left a trail in fresh volcanic ash, with a human heel-to-toe roll and no splayed big toe. Rain set the ash like cement and the prints survived for ages.
Was there only ever one human species alive at a time?
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No: usually several at once
Sixty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and the dwarf humans of Flores shared the Earth. Being the only species left is the odd case.
What is the name of the famous (and misleading) image of an ape straightening into a man?
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The March of Progress
The 1965 illustration was meant as a time-lapse but was read as a family tree. Evolution branches like a bush; it does not climb towards a goal.
On which continent are the oldest fossils of the human lineage found?
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In Africa
All early hominin finds come from Africa: from Chad through Ethiopia and Kenya to South Africa. Only Homo erectus left the continent.
What is the model called under which modern humans spread worldwide from a single continent of origin?
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Out of Africa
Genetics and fossils support it: everyone outside Africa descends from a migration wave some 60,000 years ago. Earlier excursions happened but left barely a genetic trace.
Roughly how much did the brain grow from the australopithecines to modern humans?
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It nearly tripled
From about 450 cubic centimetres in the australopithecines via some 600 in Homo habilis to 1,300 to 1,400 today. The price: the brain burns roughly a fifth of our energy while making up two percent of our weight.
Which innovation unlocked food, shortened digestion and granted time?
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The control of fire
Cooked food yields more energy for less chewing: the "cooking hypothesis" sees this as a precondition for smaller teeth, a shorter gut and a bigger brain.
Foto: hairymuseummatt (original photo), DrMikeBaxter (derivative work) · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What is the group called that contains humans and every species after the split from the chimpanzee lineage?
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The hominins
Hominini covers every species after the split from the chimp lineage: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Homo. The wider family, Hominidae, includes gorillas and orangutans.
Is there one single "missing link" between ape and human?
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No
The term is a 19th-century idea that assumes a chain that does not exist. Transitional forms have long been found: many of them, each a mosaic of old and new traits.
From what can researchers now read the DNA of extinct humans (without a single bone)?
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From cave sediment
Cave floors hold DNA from urine, faeces and skin cells. That is how Neanderthals and Denisovans were detected in layers containing no fossils at all.
Who received the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome?
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Svante Pääbo
The Swedish researcher at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute founded palaeogenetics and proved Neanderthal DNA lives on in us. His father had won the prize in 1982.
Roughly how many human species does research recognise today?
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More than twenty
The count grows with each find and shifts, because experts argue over what counts as a species. Homo naledi and Homo luzonensis were added after 2010.
How many human species are alive today?
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Exactly one
Homo sapiens is the last branch of a once densely forked bush. All living people belong to a single species and are genetically remarkably similar.
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