A seven million year long story

Until the 1970s, it was thought that human history began about two million years ago, that is, in the period to which the fossils of our ancestors found up until then dated back. In 1974, exactly fifty years ago, a discovery revolutionized the knowledge of our origins: in the Rift Valley, in Africa, more than fifty bones of the skeleton of a female Australopithecus (one of our most ancient ancestors) were found. They were given the name Lucy, in honor of the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by the Beatles, broadcast on the radio during the excavation campaign. It was a fundamental discovery, both for the quantity of finds and for their age: they dated back to more than three million years ago, therefore to a time much earlier than that until then hypothesized for the appearance of hominids. Lucy soon became a star of anthropology, but above all she paved the way for new studies of our ancestors... of which there are really many!

The history of human evolution is enriched, in fact, every year with new protagonists. It is a fascinating story, too often relegated to specialist essays and school textbooks. Susan Schädlich and Michael Stang , assisted in the drawings by Bea Davies , have chosen to tell it to us in comics in the volume Umani! L'evoluzione spiegata bene (Sonda, 2024, pp. 80).

In the book, intended for readers under 18, but enjoyable for all ages, Tali wants to organize a party for her grandmother's birthday with all her relatives, even the most ancient and mysterious ones: ancestors and primitive men included!

Armed with a digital medallion, Tali embarks on an incredible journey through time, where she can communicate with the first anthropoid apes, invite the monkeys of the Sahel to the party, the Australopithecines like Lucy, and even the Neanderthals competing with the first Homo sapiens. In this exciting comic Tali will discover how evolution has unfolded, living an adventure that spans millions of years, that has followed many paths and that has not stopped yet!

The process of hominization, in fact, probably did not follow a linear path of direct derivation of one hominid species from another until reaching us moderns. Based on the most recent studies we know that almost certainly different hominid species coexisted at the same time and the process of hominization should therefore be thought of not as a chain of rings one after the other, but rather as a bush with many branches. Each of these branches represents the various hominid species that appeared on earth: they were born, developed and coexisted for a long time with other similar species. Only about 200,000 years ago, again in Africa, Homo sapiens («knowing, wise») made his appearance, the hominid considered the most direct ancestor of modern humans. Fossil finds show that Homo sapiens was the only one to colonize all the emerged lands: from Africa, in fact, it spread to Europe and Asia, from where it reached the American continent in the north and Australia in the south. About 35,000 years ago, Homo sapiens remained the only hominid existing on the planet and continued its evolution gradually developing the peculiarities of the current human species. In fact, all the human beings who populate the Earth today descend from this remote ancestor, even if they have very different physical characteristics.

One wonders what a world inhabited by different human species, as has happened in the past, would be like.

Humans! offers us some answers, but at the same time always fuels new curiosities about our most remote past.