Today man is the dominant animal on our planet. Our ancestors were ape-like animals that lived in trees. Scientists have carefully reconstructed our history from fossil bones preserved in rocks that have given insight into what our ancestors were like. The remains of their tools and weapons are clues to how they lived. There are still plenty of puzzles, but new discoveries are being made to add to the story.

Scientists believe that a small ape-like creature called Ramapithecus could have been our ancestor. This animal lived in forests between 14 and 6 million years ago, probably sleeping at night in the safety of tree branches and only coming down to ground level during the day. Most of the time they scuttled away on all fours, but sometimes they may have stood on their hind legs, perhaps when reaching out to grab food from young fruit trees. From this developed one of the main differences between us and other animals, the fact that we walk on two legs instead of four. Scientists believe that Ramapithecus is our ancestor because of the shape of its jaw and teeth, which were more like humans than monkeys.

About 14 million years ago there also lived another ape-like creature called Dryopithecus, which scientists say may have been the ancestor of today’s ape. Living in Africa about 3 million years ago there were several types of ape-man called hominids, this name comes from the word homo, which means man. One type of hominid was Australopithecus, and there were several types. The tallest did not grow more than about 1.5 meters and their brains were only half the size of ours, but they could walk on their two feet. They ate plants and fruits and probably birds’ eggs when they had a chance to steal them.

Another hominid called Homo lived at the same time, it had a larger brain than Australopithecus and scientists believe it was a direct ancestor of man. Homo was a carnivore where small groups hunted slow, sick, or young animals. They may have used rocks and thick branches to kill them. Very slowly, over millions of years, hominids developed and changed, and remains have been unearthed in East Africa that have found traces of tool-making ancestors of ours. Scientists have named them Homo habilis, meaning handy man, which is believed to be an early member of the larger group known as Homo erectus.

Homo habilis is the first of our ancestors known to make and use tools. They were simple stone crushers and sharp fragments of stone, where the manufacture of tools of this type gave rise to today’s science and technology, and they also made the first shelters. These were made of twigs and branches, using stones and rocks to support them, which would have given them greater protection from the weather and fierce animals when sleeping at night. And as a matter of interest because they didn’t know how to make a fire, the meat was torn apart and eaten raw.

There are few remains showing how homo erectus gradually developed, but we do know that around 250,000 years ago, a new type of people lived, and these were Homo sapians, which means wise man, and this is the group to which we also belong. and there were various types of Homo sapians.

The Neanderthal people were a heavy, stocky type with strong muscles and sloping foreheads, and they lived mainly in Europe at the time of the last ice age. They must have been difficult because during this time much of Europe was covered in ice and snow all the time.

The first fully modern peoples in Europe appeared about 40,000 years ago, and these first peoples are called Cro-Magnon, after the place in France where their remains were first found. Scientists are not sure what happened to the Neanderthals, it may have been because the Cro-Magnons had better tools and weapons and traveled in larger groups, being able to kill them, or it could have been that they were unable to adapt to the warmer climate. climate when the ice age ended.

In addition to being good hunters and artists, the Cro-Magnon people had many other skills. They made needles from slivers of reindeer antlers that they used to sew animal skins for clothing, and they did not have cotton thread like we use today, instead they used strips of leather or gut. The Cro-Magnons loved jewelry, they made beads, bracelets and pendants with many things, such as pebbles, shells and fish bones, we know this because they were often buried with them when they died.

It has taken a lot of careful study to gather ideas about the development of early man, and new discoveries often mean changes in these ideas, so nothing can be taken for granted. And like an entire civilization living on this planet, humanity has progressed with the knowledge and technology that we know today and it’s increasing rapidly, and who knows what we may evolve into in the far future, because look how far we’ve come already.