Courses
Courses for Kids
Free study material
Offline Centres
More
Store Icon
Store
seo-qna
SearchIcon
banner

Write evolutionary history of modern man.

Answer
VerifiedVerified
485.7k+ views
Hint:The modern human beings developed in Africa and spread to Asia and Europe in which Neanderthals were living. Homo sapiens or modern human species that we are in Latin means 'wise man.

Complete answer:
Our species is the only remaining species of the genus Homo but the focus of much speculation has been where we come from. Modern humans emerged in Africa during the past two hundred thousand years and developed from their most probably recent common ancestor, Homo erectus. Homo erectus is an extinct, between 1.9 million and 135,000 years ago human species.
Two main models to describe the evolution of Homo sapiens have. Such are the "out of Africa" and the "multi-regional." The concept "Out of Africa" is the most commonly accepted concept at present. Homo sapiens evolved before spreading across the planet in Africa. The 'multi-regional' model, on the other hand, indicates that the evolution of the Homo sapiens took place over a long time in many areas. The mixture of the different groups inevitably culminated in the single Homo sapiens species we see today.
The 'out of Africa' model is endorsed by genetic research. African countries have the highest levels of human genetic variation. In fact, in Africa there is more genetic diversity than in the rest of the world. The DNA of both our mother and father is a mixture of our genomes. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is only provided by our mother, however. This is because the female egg is rich in mitochondrial DNA, while the male sperm only contains a small amount. The sperm uses their limited number of mitochondria before fertilisation to reinforce the breed into the egg. When a sperm is paired with an egg, all mitochondria of the sperm are damaged.
Compared to the genome of Neanderthal, human genomes are closer to each other than each of them is similar to the genome of Neanderthal. Some Neanderthal DNA is identical to DNA of Asian and European origin, but these are not present in African DNA. This indicates that modern human beings developed in Africa and spread to Asia and Europe in which Neanderthals were living. In these regions, a degree of interbreeding took place between early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

Note: Initial analyses of DNA from the Neanderthals Mitochondria showed that their mitochondrial DNA appears very distinct from modern humans and indicates that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens did not interbreed.