In the article “Darwin and the recent African origin of modern humans”, Richard Klein dives into our understanding of the origin of modern humans and how it too, has evolved through time. Klein offers examples and rationale behind the thought process of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxely and other specialist of modern human’s history. Through this process we are given better understanding of who modern humans evolved from and where we are from.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was a revolutionary theory during his time and still is in our world today. It challenged people to look closer at the world as whole. In Darwin’s second book “The Descent of Man” he displayed a multitude of comparative data from anatomical, embryological, and behavioral
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Fossil records have supported their assumptions. During their active years, many of Darwin’s and Huxley’s colleagues believed the human race represented sporadically evolved populations of Homo sapiens. This theory has since been discredited. In 1891 Eugene Dubois found the first human fossil, before these only Neanderthal fossils were being compared to those of modern humans. This finding is viewed as the first specimen of the Homo erectus species. Subsequent findings that diverged from the Neanderthal morphology followed years later. Together these findings depicted to scientists the basic development of human …show more content…
Natural selection and random genetic drift occurred after this initial expansion out of Africa, which evolved to at least three Homo lineages: Homo sapiens, Homo neaderthalensis, and Homo erectus. Archeological and composite fossil records suggest the African lineage spread and replaced others roughly 50,000 years ago. Genes from living human’s places the source population for the spread was most likely located in eastern or southern Africa. Many specialists consider that the Darwinian fitness advantage allowed modern humans to survive and reproduce at much higher rates than the archaic humans in Eurasia. The Darwinian fitness is said to be a result of increased brain capacity or behavioral changes towards social, economic, demographic and most likely population