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.
The first written records date back a little more than 5,000 years in Egypt and ancient Sumer. The earliest Sumerian records were made using reeds cut at an angle to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) marks on clay, which was then baked hard. Many of these clay tablets survive today, and scholars can still read them.
This clay tablet has been translated to say: “29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim”. That makes Kushim the first individual in recorded history whose name is known to us. He (she?) is not a king, entertainer, conqueror or athlete. But an Accountant.
Kushim (Sumerian: 𒆪𒋆 KU. ŠIM) is the earliest known recorded name of a person in writing. The name "Kushim" is found on several Uruk period (c. 3400–3000 BC) clay tablets used to record transactions of barley.
The Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3100 BCE, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE.
While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in the earnest only in the 1800s.
Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago. The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.
Kushim – The Earliest Recorded Name
The earliest recorded surname on record belongs to an ancient Babylonian accountant named Kushim. Historians estimate that Kushim lived sometime between 3400-3000 BCE and worked as an accountant for the city of Uruk during this time period.
1. Mesopotamia, 4000-3500 B.C. Meaning “between two rivers” in Greek, Mesopotamia (located in modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and Syria) is considered the birthplace of civilization.
The oldest human remains in Australia were found at Lake Mungo in south-west New South Wales, part of the Willandra Lakes system. This site has been occupied by Aboriginal people from at least 47,000 years ago to the present.
Genesis 4 is also the first time a human being dies. In spite of the fact that God forbid Adam to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and warned him that “in that day you eat of it you shall die,” he lives to the ripe age of 930 (Gen 2:17; 5:5).
Co-lead researcher Shimona Kealy said these people probably travelled through Indonesia's northern islands, into New Guinea and then Australia, which were part of a single continent between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, when sea levels were 25-50 metres below the current level.
Lomekwi stone tools: 3.3 million years old
Who that original maker is, however, remains unknown—the Lomekwi tools were created for hammering and cutting well before the genus Homo (the line of species that would eventually produce us, modern humans) is thought to have emerged around 2.8 million years ago.
World's Oldest Water Lies At The Bottom Of A Canadian Mine And Is 2 Billion Years Old.
Lomekwi Stone Tools – 3.3 Million Years. According to multiple records, the stone tools found at Lomekwi 3, an archeological site in Kenya, are the oldest artifacts in the world today.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa.
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.
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.
Estimates range wildly, from as late as 50,000 years ago to as early as the beginning of the human genus more than 2 million years ago. But words leave no traces in the archaeological record. So researchers have used proxy indicators for symbolic abilities, such as early art or sophisticated toolmaking skills.
Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They've found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original "proto-human language" might have sounded.
Proto-Human language - Wikipedia.
Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, adam is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as "mankind".
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.