Coexistence of Our Human Ancestors

Scientists find our family tree is like a wayward bush with stubby branches. Family tree is a tree showing how human beings evolved from nonhuman primates to the present man. Meave Leakey recently discovered two species of human being lived at the same time in Kenya. But this contradicts early evolutionary concept of man that one human group evolved from the previous one. Meave Leakey is one of the famous family of paleontologists. She discredits the concept of human being evolving from ape to the highly sophisticated Modern Man.

Our old theory is that our earliest human ancestor is Homo habilis, which evolved into Homo erectus and finally into modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Meave Leakey thinks that two earlier species lived side by side! According to her research, she estimated that the species lived 1.5 million years back. They coexisted together for half a million years. This research was reported in the journal called Nature. This paper was written after scientists found fossilized bones in 2000.

The scientists unearthed complete skull bones of Homo erectus within walking distance of Homo habilis. It dated from the same general time period. This is the proof that Homo erectus and Homo habilis coexisted. Fred Sppor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College of London stated that our grandmother and great-grandmothere were sisters rather than mother-daughter.

It is an amazing discovery, isn't it? The whole world was thinking of an evolution in a linear way. We have also seen Neanderthal Man's fossil discovery created stir as it has human features but also features of an ape. We have found linear and branching evolution but we have never found such a discovery which reflects ancestors we thought one evolved from other was actually living side by side.