Where do we come from?

At some point in our lifetime, we have all asked the question, where do we come from? According to Wikipedia, Adam and Eve, according to the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, were the first man and woman. They are central to the belief that humanity is in essence a single family, with everyone descended from a single pair of original ancestors. It also provides the basis for the doctrines of the fall of man and original sin that are important beliefs in Christianity, although not held in Judaism or Islam. According to our bibles, Adam and Eve were created some 6 to 10 000 years ago.

Then along comes Lucy. Lucy, a 3.2 million-year-old hominid whose remains were discovered in Ethiopia, 41 years ago, comes from the Australopithecus afarensis species, which wasn’t known to exist before Lucy’s remains were dug up in 1974. Suddenly, Lucy was the oldest ancient human predecessor ever found, and she had been kept remarkably intact — at least 40% of her skeleton was still in place. The female hominid whose ancient fossils had essentially thrown a wrench in everything experts knew about the origin of man was then given the name Lucy after the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” came on at the team’s campsite the night of their discovery. According to experts, Lucy walked upright, stood at only 3 feet, 7 inches, and weighed a mere 64 pounds, the Independent reported.

So where to from here? In terms of ancient civilisations, Sumer, located in Mesopotamia, is the first known complex civilization, developing the first city-states in the 4th millennium BCE. It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script, appeared around 3000 BCE. Cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs. And so here we have the oldest or first known means by which mankind could record any form of history.

Once again, referring to Wiki, Ancient history as a term refers to the aggregate of past events from the beginning of writing and recorded human history and extending as far as the post-classical history. The phrase may be used either to refer to the period of time or the academic discipline.

The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with Sumerian Cuneiform script; the oldest discovered form of coherent writing from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC. Ancient History covers all continents inhabited by humans in the 3,000 BC – 500 AD period.

To then answer the question, where do we come from, surely we have to turn to science? Humans first appeared in the fossil record around 66 million years ago, soon after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that eliminated about three-quarters of plant and animal species on Earth, including most dinosaurs. The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago such as the Omo remains of Ethiopia and the fossils of Herto sometimes classified as Homo sapiens idaltu.

Human evolution is the evolutionary process that led to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, beginning with the evolutionary history of primates—in particular genus Homo—and leading to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human pipedalism and language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, which indicate that human evolution was not linear but a web.

The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, paleontology, neurobiology, ethology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, embryology and genetics.

To throw a curve-ball here, I truly believe that we all originated in the stars. Follow this link for a short video on the Smithsonian Magazine website, to give you some insight into this https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/science/were-all-made-of-stardust-heres-how_1/

If this is a subject that interests you, may I suggest that you watch “How the Universe Works” and “Wonders of the Universe.” They are both presented by the most amazing Astro-physicist Professor Brian Cox and give so much insight as to how everything in the universe came into being. Another interesting link with more videos by Professor Cox https://ihavenotv.com/creation-brian-cox-life-of-a-universe