A subject that has always fascinated me. I sometimes have to scratch my head when the denial folks ask about the missing link. Which one? There are so many. Do we know the whole story as read through the fossil record? No. There are lots of missing parts, but there has been enough finds to fascinate me with clues to OUR STORY.

It was theorized that what distinguished early man from his ape cousins was the development of a larger brain. But when a bipedal potential ancestor was discovered (Lucy) with an age of 3 million years that really was a Eureka moment. Maybe the start down the road to humanhood was the development that allowed us to occupy grasslands now being tall enough to watch for predators, and to have hands free to carry things. Although Lucy was fully bipedal she was assigned to the order Australopithecus. An early ape, not a hominid.

So...who do we consider the first hominid? And when?

....I'll leave that discussion for later. Maybe some will be interested enough to look it up. Warning! Pretty darn interesting stuff; you might be there awhile.

Lucy was an australopithicene, not an ape. Homo Habilis was the first hominid, as far as we know.

They're discovering more than a few early hominids, and lines, which apparently didn't mind crossing with each other, we're a blended race, lol

Doesn't "australopithicene" mean southern ape?

Which ones are you thinking of here?

Besides the ones already mentioned theres H heidelburgensis, erectus, rudolfensis, Naledi, and others which may be distinct or hybrid races, then you have the more "modern" H. Neanderthals, Denisovans, which definitely cross bred with H Sapians....
The first? who knows, but we have come a long way in only 6,000 years...

We only have bones from about 6000 early hominids, ranging from teeth to almost-complete skeletons. Most of those are just fragments . We only have about 200 skulls from early hominids. That's hardly anything, in the scheme of things. There's likely a huge variety of yet-undiscovered or will-never-be discovered hominids out there, and tons to be learned about them. I think it's absolutely fascinating stuff, to think about how they must have lived, what they say thought, etc etc.

"Evolution" by Stephen Baxter is a good fiction book on the he subject. Highly recommend.

Lucy, The Beginnings of Mankind by Donald Johanson is a great read. I learned a lot from that book.

Neanderthal had larger brains than us on average- hmmmmmmm

Bigger isn't always better.

How do you actually know these were not either humans with slight differences in structure or just apes in some cases?

I swear I have seen Neanderthals and even CroMagnons before

Just hang on, at the rate we are regressing it won't be long now!

Fixed it!

Carl, apes are hominids. They belong to the family Hominidae, as we humans do.

I believe and a lot of research agrees, that greater intelligence in humans came from Neanderthals. People without any Neanderthal DNA have 25 to 30 point lower IQs then those who do.

Keith

Yeah, you're right Keith on the Hominidae part. I'm not sure that having Neanderthal DNA raises your IQ any. I would like to see the peer reviewed research on that one.

I had an Anthropology prof that used to say if you dressed a Neanderthal in a suit and put him on a subway in New York nobody would even notice.

What makes us human? The fact that Denosovians, Neanderthals and modern humans could successfully interbreed meant we were the same species. Or at least sub species.

Was Homo erectus human? Could he have interbred with modern humans successfully? Dang good question in my mind. I'm certain that the Australopithecenes could not have, being more closely aligned with the lesser apes like gibbons and such.

If it were ever possible to unravel the Homo erectus genome we would learn a lot. Doubt that would ever be possible unless a mosquito trapped in amber (that had feasted on one) was to be discovered.

There are still whispers of Neanderthals, Denisovians and other unknown hominids out in the world, heck why not bigfoot as one of them makes it easier to understand how they evade humans etc, lots to think about if you take the time

Especially during rush hour on the urban freeways!