If an anthropologist wanted to go back in time to see when humans first existed when and where would they go?

Question

If an anthropologist wanted to go back in time to see when humans first existed when and where would they go? What kind of things seperate the current human from our earlier primate descendents?

Answer 1

It boils down to your belief-system: If you believe in science, a skull was found in China that carbon-dates back 9 MILLION years! If you believe in Darwin, we evolved from fish. If you're Jewish, you believe mankind is some 5800 recorded years; but ancient scrolls are revealing even earlier than that.

I do not subscribe to the theory that I came from an ape. I believe there are FOUR distinct kingdoms: mineral, vegetable, animal, and human.

"It ain't over til the fat-lady sings..." Primates may have 4 hands & 48 chromosomes, but they have not conquered the earth! They also have no pre-frontal lobe development (no sense of time, etc.)

Answer 2

they would go to peristhoric  times and  see how they became drank,ate, slept,and how they servied

Answer 3

Africa about 4 million years ago.

Give Lucy my best.

Answer 4

First, they'd have to draw an arbitrary line and say, this is what we're calling the first human, as divergence of a species from another species is a gradual process, taking many, many, many, many, many generations.

But you could get some sense of your answer here:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/bein...

Oh, and they'd go to Africa. Probably to some place where we've found evidence early humans were there, so they'd have a better chance of being able to see them.

Answer 5

6000 years to the garden of Eden, on day 6.

He would find both human and ape fully formed and perfectly designed, and very different, just as they are now!

Answer 6

Going really far back in time could alter the present!  You never know what little insignificant move that even disturbing an insect or small animal had on our development.  

Going "way" back in time could result in the anthropologist never being born.  We may even have different appearances than today, perhaps Neanderthal Men would rule this era even today!    

Time travel to our far distant past could be detrimental to our very existence!

Answer 7

The differences are anatomical on the skeleton. Obviously we have no direct samples of flesh.

The shape of the skull is one, the shape of the teeth are another. There is also the shifting of our shoulder blade to a position flat on our back instead of our sides and the flatter rib cage to match that.

The upright pelvis and the socket of the hip joint specialized for walking upright.

We also have lighter bones and our thigh bones are oval shaped instead of round in cross section.

How long ago depends upon who is trying to guess.

If you say strictly Homo sapiens then the answer is about 250,000 years ago.

If you count Homo erectus as human then you can stretch it back to about 2,000,000 years ago.

Answer 8

I'd have to pick 2 million years ago when both Homo hablis & erectus existed in Africa.  Because it is estimated that every species has existed 30 to 40% longer than the oldest fossil evidence indicates, that would give me a good look at both species.  I suspect erectus began to migrate out of Africa more than  2 million years ago, but of course can't prove this with evidence. I also want to know if erectus & hablis could interbreed & if they were still doing it when hablis went extinct ~1.4 million yrs ago.

What intrigues me most is "just when did homo begin to use language to communicate & what did it sound like?"  I think the ability to construct & understand complicated grammar may have been the big jump in human evolution.