Disagree
Humans are a young species, in geological terms. The average "lifespan" of a mammal species, measured by its duration in the fossil record, is around 10 million years. While hominids have followed a separate evolutionary path since their divergence from the ape lineage, around 7 million years ago, our own species (Homo sapiens) is much younger. Fossils classified as archaic H. sapiens appear about 400,000 years ago, and the earliest known modern humans date back only 170,000 years.
Our knowledge of human evolution is changing rapidly, as new fossils are discovered and described every year. Thirty years ago, it was generally accepted that humans and the great apes last shared a common ancestor perhaps 16-20 million years ago, and that the separate human branch was occupied by only a few species, each evolving from the one before. Now we know, through a combination of new fossil finds and molecular biology, that humans and chimpanzees diverged as little as 7 million years ago, and that our own lineage is "bushy", with many different species in existence at the same time.
Our view of our evolutionary past has changed as social attitudes have changed. Darwin was remarkably prescient when he wrote, in 1871 "The Descent of Man", that humans had evolved in Africa and were closely related to the great apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-utan). But at that time this view was anathema to many, since the majority of people still accepted the concept of special creation.
This is why the first fossil hominid material to be discovered, that of Neandertal Man, attracted even more controversy than the later discoveries of Australopithecus africanus and Homo erectus. Rather than accept the fossil as the remains of a human ancestor, the distinguished German scientist R. Virchow described it as the skeleton of a diseased Cossack cavalryman. And even once the antiquity of the remains was established, many scientists refused to accept that Neandertals could be closely related to modern humans, depicting them instead as brutish and apelike. This interpretation reflected the prevailing prejudices about human ancestry, and was supported by misinterpretation of the remains of the "Old Man of La Chapelle", whose skeleton was warped by arthritis.
Even when the idea that apes and humans shared a common ancestor became more widely accepted, the concept of an African origin was not. The scientist Ernst Haeckel, for example, was convinced that humanity's nearest common ancestor was the orang-utan, and that humans evolved in Asia. Though wrong in this, he was a persuasive writer and many people came to accept his view.
This is why Eugene Dubois sought the "missing link" between humans and apes in Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies). However, he met with considerable disbelief - and some ridicule - when he named his Solo River fossils Pithecanthropus (now Homo) erectus and described them as belonging to a human ancestor. This rejection reflected the prevailing view that our large brain had evolved while the skeleton was still ape-like, and Dubois' suggestion that the reverse was true was sidelined.
The "large brain first" view received further support when the Piltdown fossils were presented to the world. While we now know that they are fraudulent, at the time (1911) they seemed to demonstrate quite clearly that early humans had a modern cranium atop an ape-like body. And since the Piltdown remains were found in England, they conveniently supported the prevailing idea that modern humans had evolved in Europe, rather than in Africa.
Consequently, when in 1924 Raymond Dart recognised the position of the Taung baby (Australopithecus africanus) on the human family tree, his ideas initially faced considerable opposition. Not until more australopithecine fossils were discovered did his recognition of A. australis as a hominid gain credence. However, it is now accepted that the ancestors of modern humans evolved in Africa and remained there until perhaps 1.5 million years ago, when Homo erectus populations left Africa and moved rapidly across Europe and Asia.
This diaspora was the reverse of a movement that occurred in the late Miocene, when the ancestors of the African apes migrated from Eurasia into Africa. Here they underwent another adaptive radiation, culminating in the divergence of ancestral chimp and hominid populations from their last common ancestor, 7 million years ago.
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Miocene Apes
Apes evolved in Africa at least 20 million years ago, when the continent was a separate land mass. The best known of these early apes was Proconsul. Proconsul was recognisably an ape, but retained some monkey-like characteristics of the backbone, pelvis, and forelimbs that suggest it was quadrupedal, rather than a brachiator
Lowered sea levels 17 - 16.5 million years ago provided a land bridge between Africa and Eurasia, and some of these early apes used it to enter Eurasia, along with elephan