What came first, the caveman or the cavewoman?

Question

Did men come onto the earth first or woman??

Answer 1

Is this a question about palaeoanthroplogy or about conservative religious beliefs?

A scientific answer would be that they arrived together, very slowly, as a result of evolution.

To answer a question you didn't quite ask, the female in nature is the "default" gender.  Female precedes male.  the male is just a specialized modification designed to increase the variety in the gene pool.  Females don't need males - in higher animals (including humans) they just need  the male sperm.

Thus the Genesis account of the creation of man and woman is bad science.  It does have some religious value, but it is not only historically incorrect but is seriously scientifically inaccurate.

Answer 2

The cave *clan*.

Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) evolved from another humanlike group.  You don't have a situation where a Neanderthal gave birth to a modern human--evolution doesn't work that way.  You had a group of people that was isolated from another, and facing different pressure from its environment--different predators and/or food sources, etc.  Over time the two groups change and become increasingly different from one another.  Eventually (usually over millions of years) they form different species.

The same process occurs in human languages.

Answer 3

No way of knowing. See, with the chicken/egg thing, there's a definitive answer: the egg. The first true chicken egg was a mutation, and came out of an almost-chicken creature. THEN it became a true chicken. But with cave man/cave woman, you can't say. This almost-person gave birth to a true person, and then that true person had some babies. But you can't say what gender that true person was. Also, caveman isn't really a scientific term, so it's arguable that we could agree on it, even if we had a time machine.