From apes to humans - a brief introduction

We, humans, are from the order of Primates and from the family Hominidae. There are genetic and physical similarities showing that Homo sapiens –the modern human species- has a very close relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. The great apes of Africa (chimpanzees and gorillas) and humans share a common ancestor that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago (I’m not going to get into detail on this, so if you need more information you can visit some of the next website[ 2 ])

Figure 1. Primates tree from this website [3]

Table 1. Homo sapiens taxonomy

	Human	Basic meaning
Kingdom	Animalia	Animals
Phylum	Chordata	With bone spine
Class	Mammalia	Give milk to young
Order	Primata	Basically, monkeys and humans
Family	Hominidae	Large animals of primates
Genus	Homo	Humans, extinct and living
Species	Homo sapiens	“wise or knowing man”

In the next section you can learn about the different diets and feeding behaviours of our ancestors.

From apes to humans - a brief introduction

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