• Question: who was the first human born in this earth?

    Asked by naresh to David, James, Mike, Suze, Will on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: James Marrow

      James Marrow answered on 12 Jun 2011:

      We’ll never know “who”, since no one will have recorded the name. There’s also a debate as to “when” the first human was born – at what point can we identify a new species from its ancestor? (sorry to answer your question with another one!)

    • Photo: Mike Dodd

      Mike Dodd answered on 12 Jun 2011:

      That’s a very difficult question to answer. As James said, we’ll never know “who”. The current theory of the “first” true humans comes from the theory of “out of Africa”. The idea is that humans originated in Africa and left around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world. Again James makes a good point, you can’t ever really tell where one species starts and a new one starts.

      After some interesting conversations in my lab on this question, I remembered an interesting BBC horizon show on this topic. It relates to my work in the lab. The first human can be traced back to a Mitochondrial Eve, this isn’t Eve in the sense of Christianity, but related to the science behind mitochondria. Mitochondria are the powerhouse of our cells, they convert the food that we eat into energy for our cells. Unlike your genes, which you share half your mum’s and half your dad’s, your mitochondria come only from your mother. The mitochondria contain there own unique DNA that is different from that in your cells (your genetic code). You can use this mitochondrial DNA to trace back through thousands of generations, until you get to a common ancestor, called the “mitochondrial Eve”. This is the mother of the first human, where all mitochondria in the human population originate.
      Thanks for a great question

    • Photo: Suze Kundu

      Suze Kundu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I have no idea, but I think Mike is right in that human life originated in Africa. The continents used to be all joined up, but the landmasses now float on these ‘plates’. When these plates started to move apart, breaking up the landmass, different people evolved to adapt their environment, which ties in nicely with another of the questions asked, about Darwin’s theory of evolution.

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