How Old is Mankind

[Persia]

"Ever wondered about how old Man is? Most scientists would reply that modern Man probably appeared around 100,000 years ago, the culmination of a long-drawn process of Darwinian evolution which begun several million years ago.

http://www.newsbad.com/story/anthropology-how-old-mankind

[Ikki]

What a ridiculous article. They say modern man is ~100,000 years old, and then use the finding of an older possible hominin to 'debunk' that? What?

Of course there were humans before 100,000 years ago. That's so common knowledge that this is just frightening. Our particular species may be be only 100-200,000 years old, but our genus (Homo) has been around for ~2.5 million years, and we parted ways with chimpanzees as much as 5-8 millions years ago. The status of the Flores findings as a representative of a new human species (Homo floresienses) has not reached consensus to my knowledge. If it ever becomes official, it will be revolutionary in many ways - but rewriting the age of our species won't be one of them.

[Indiogene]

The best estimate any certified anthropologist and biogenetic scientist is 3.5 million to 5.0 million years (total no. of years of several types of species of homo sapiens hominids) based on all known earliest human fossil findings in east Africa (the Great Rift valley, for example).

But there was recent evidence of Homo Erectus - the earliest modern human subspecies - skeletal finds in Central Asia (the Karakpal steppe of Kazakhstan) confirms the new belief on the origin of humanity began in Asia not Africa over 500,000 years ago. But the Homo Erectus race went into extinction about 200,000 years ago, and we usually associate modern man as direct descendants of Cro-Magnon Man in southwestern Europe and parts of Arabian peninsula from 50,000 years ago.

Radiocarbon dating technology of determination in age of fossils flora or fauna (plants and animals) is 90% accurate, but one case back in 2001 on the finding of Australia's oldest human skull shown it was 65,000 years old...after a wild error age of 6.5 million years! (someone had to recheck the data's accuracy).

Edited July 10, 2011 by Makoto Jupiter