Wisdom as a Mental Tool of the Symbolic Species

The Evolution Of Mankind

The human race evolved from primates living in Africa sixty million years ago. Approximately twenty million years ago, the first terrestrial apes evolved in Africa. Perhaps six to eight million years ago, this group split into two: the modern apes and the hominids. The first hominids are called Australopithecines, or southern apes. Humans and apes evolved directly from this same branch of the super-family Hominoidea, and subsequently, humans evolved into the family Hominidae and sub-family Hominae. While great apes are identified from several East African sites dating 17 to 20 million years ago, Hominid fossils appear 2.5 to 4.5 million years ago. However, their origin is estimated between six and ten million years ago. The Great Apes’ evolution ends with the chimpanzees, which are the final “stop” on the evolutionary path, and which gave way to Homo sapiens (200,000-60,000). (Figure 1 (Burenhult, 2003).

Figure 1.

The evolution of humans

Further development of humankind was triggered by the relationships among communication, information processing skills (later called info-communication or INFOCO System), society, brain, and consciousness. Table 1 illustrates this evolution.