Our early ancestors

It is thought that early man broke off from the apes around twenty six million years ago, at the beginning of the Miocene Age. For the next nineteen million years man remained little more than a superior ape. Evolvement was slow and much study is still being undertaken in this area. Then around seven million years at the start of what is known as the Pliocene era, evolution speeded up, until about two million years ago, in our present era - the Pleistocene, modern man came into being.

Just what do we mean by man? There is only one living species in the genus Homo and that is Homo Sapiens (Wise man), whom we also refer to as modern man. There are of course substantial differences between the races of man, but we are essentially all of the same species.

There is a lively debate as to whether man emerged from just one spot (the Kenyan rift valley being the likely candidate) and then spread all over the world, or whether different races evolved in different locations more or less at the same time from their primate ancestors.

Early hominid fossils have been found, independent of each others evolution in Kenya, Northern India, China, Turkey, Greece and Hungary. These are all specimens of a hominid known as Ramapithecus, probably mans most likely candidate for a hominid ancestor.

The earliest evidence for the first real 'men' is still being discovered as new finds are made at several East African sites. There is some confusion about how many different types of hominids were living between one and a half and four million years ago. Wherever man evolved, either separately or from one group, around one and half million years ago - man had evolved through homo habilis, homo erectus,(the first homo erectus fossil was found in Heidelberg, Germany and dates to around half a million years ago) into homo Sapiens with all its very distinctive sub racial groups.

Whatever the eventual scientific conclusions, and these include our early connections to Neanderthal man about 80,000 years ago, modern man spread into the various continents, crossing now non-existent land bridges until eventually the various races of Homo Sapiens were established across the world.

In Africa we had the Negroid and Negritos and their near cousins, the Hottentots or Bushmen, closely related to the pygmies. In Asia, Negroid influences were also present, but the dominant race was and still is the Mongoloid, though within the Mongoloid/ Asiatic peoples there are many differences. A Dravidian Indian from the sub continent, looks more Negroid than a Japanese as an example.

In Australia, the Australoids developed separately and their culture was still at the Stone Age of development when they were discovered by explorers. North and South America were colonised by the Amerinds and Europe including Western Russia by the Caucasoid.

So we have essentially five major races in the world today - the Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Amerind and Australoid. These in turn can be broken down into sub racial groups. Our own Caucasian people having such sub groups as the Dinaric, Slavic, Alpine, Nordic, Celtic and a number of others.

Around 30,000 years ago, though the date is by no means that fixable, an identifiable group of Caucasians - the Aryans - were living in the Caucasus region of Southern Russia. These people either from population pressure or sheer wanderlust started to spread out in all directions.

Other races, for instance the Negroid, living in warm and relatively lush climates seemed to have adapted quickly to their environment and had no great evolutionary need for change. Our Caucasian/Aryan ancestors however, evolving over hundreds of thousands of years in harsh climates had to struggle that much harder to survive and evolve. Probably in no other part of the world did Homo Sapiens face such tough conditions. In time, through survival of the fittest, natural selection and evolution, a people evolved - the Aryans, our people, who were spread and explore many parts of the world. The Aryans were  the great culture bearers, and in the next chapter we shall look more closely at the Aryan beginnings of most great civilisations.