• Question: who was the first person born?

    Asked by anon-186553 to Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Danny, Catherine, Andy on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Verity Hill

      Verity Hill answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      This is a fun question! So about 200,000 years ago is when we think modern humans as a species started existing. But it’s not that at some point a different species parent gave birth to a human – it’s a gradual process. So we don’t know exactly! But at some point 200,000 years ago there was a person that looked like we do now

    • Photo: Trystan Leng

      Trystan Leng answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      This is a great question, because it raises a philosophical problem. If there was a first ‘person’, its parent would have to be a non-person, suggesting that they are different species. But this doesn’t really make sense, how could a mother and a child differ so dramatically that they are considered different species!?

      We like to think of things in discrete terms, either something is a person or it isn’t. But such thinking leads to a paradox, known as ‘the paradox of the heap’ or ‘sorites paradox’. For example, 1 grain of sand is not a heap, and if we add another grain of sand to something that isn’t a heap, it still isn’t one. So how many grains of sand makes a heap? When dealing with things like ‘heap’ or ‘species’, we have to be careful!

      But Verity’s right – we think around 200,000 years ago modern human began.

    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      The first human like species was Homo habilis which evolved around 2.8 million years ago. We are homo sapiens and evolved 1.3 to 1.8 million years ago. They probably didn’t have a name, we would have been acting like cavemen back then!

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