Question: How did humans form?

Melissa Wilson Sayres answered on 27 Apr 2016:

When we think about how species form, we have to think about populations. Individuals have mutations, but it is populations that change over time. We have lots of evidence, in DNA and in the fossil record, for changes in the ancestral population of apes that eventually experienced unique mutations and evolutionary forces leading to the modern human population.

When evolution of humans is commonly talked about, we usually just see one person as the representative human – but that is very misleading. If you look around at your friends and teachers, would you say just one of them could represent all the diversity around you? Would they represent ll the diversity in humans across the world? Probably not.

For more research about humans, you can check out the website for the Institute for Human Origins: https://iho.asu.edu
and the Human Origins website from the Smithsonian: http://humanorigins.si.edu