The era that most people think of when they talk about "cavemen" is the Paleolithic Era, sometimes referred to as the Stone Age (though actually the Paleolithic is but one part of the Stone Age). This era extends from more than 2 million years into the past until sometime between 40,000 and 5,000 years ago.
No! After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
If he says, “Well, darling, you know the Bible says Adam and Eve were the first people God made, so that means they came first,” then the child is conflicted with the science she's studying, which tells her the caveman evolved from lower forms of life.
The most recent fossil and archaeological evidence of Neanderthals is from about 40,000 years ago in Europe. After that point they appear to have gone physically extinct, although part of them lives on in the DNA of humans alive today.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
They used these variations to create a more reliable molecular clock and found that Adam lived between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago. A comparable analysis of the same men's mtDNA sequences suggested that Eve lived between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago1.
Putting all this together, between 9,800 and 9,700 years ago is an accurate date of creation for Adam and Eve. During this time, the Upper Paleolithic/Lower Mesolithic, humans created before Adam and Eve were yet hunter-gatherers.
We once lived alongside Neanderthals, but interbreeding, climate change, or violent clashes with rival Homo sapiens led to their demise.
The spread of modern humans across Europe is associated with the demise and ultimate extinction of Neanderthal populations 40,000 years ago, likely due to competition for resources.
Our ancestors in the palaeolithic period, which covers 2.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago, are thought to have had a diet based on vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and meat. Cereals, potatoes, bread and milk did not feature at all.
According to the Bible, dinosaurs must have been created by God on the sixth day of creation. Genesis 1:24 says, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.”
It might have been a very ancient language such as proto Indo European, from which Sanskrit, Roman, Hitite and many other ancient and modern languages have evolved, including english.
Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human.
Evidence suggests an asteroid impact was the main culprit. Volcanic eruptions that caused large-scale climate change may also have been involved, together with more gradual changes to Earth's climate that happened over millions of years.
The average age at menarche for modern hunter-gatherers seems a much more accurate estimation for a Paleolithic woman). This means that the average woman would have Child 1 at 19, Child 2 at 22, and Child 3 at 25 – and then, according to the “cavemen died young” theory, she would die.
Typically, they went to sleep three hours and 20 minutes after sunset and woke before sunrise. And they slept through the night. The result of these sleep patterns: Nearly no one suffered from insomnia. In none of their languages is there even a word for insomnia.
How the Neanderthals died out remains one of the biggest mysteries in human evolution. A new paper proposes that Homo sapiens may have been responsible for the extinction of Neanderthals not by violence, but through sex instead. Making love, not war, might have put the Neanderthals on a path to extinction.
10,000 years ago: European males – 162.5cm (5 ft 4 inches). A dramatic reduction in the size of humans occurred at this time. Many scientists think that this reduction was influenced by global climatic change and the adoption of agriculture.
The only realistic scenario for the evolution of two species out of ours would probably be if we expanded beyond our home planet and then lost contact with the settlers. If both populations survived long enough – much more than 100,000 years – we might see divergence and maybe two species of humans.
Broadly speaking, evolution simply means the gradual change in the genetics of a population over time. From that standpoint, human beings are constantly evolving and will continue to do so long as we continue to successfully reproduce.
In a physiological sense, it might indeed be a creature from another age, but whatever culture or language it develops would depend on its surroundings. An extinct culture of early hominids isn't something you can recreate. Plus, there are no shortage of ethical concerns.
The answer, it turns out, may lie in the meaty diets of their early human ancestors and the evolution of genes that protected them from the many hazards of carnivory.
He may have stood about 5-ft.-5-in. (166 cm) tall, the average man's height at the time.
He created people out of love for the purpose of sharing love. People were created to love God and each other. Additionally, when God created people, he gave them good work to do so that they might experience God's goodness and reflect his image in the way they care for the world and for each other.