人类演化(human evolution)

从非人类、原人进展到现代人类的演化型态。发生学的证据指出，活在五百万至八百万年前非洲大陆的巨猿（great ape，巨猿科Pongidae），与现代人之间存在着系谱关系。现存已知的最古老原人，大约生活在四百万年前，考古学家只在非洲发现过，将之分类为「南猿科」（Australopithecus）。南猿的分支，例如南方粗猿（A. afarensis）和南方小猿（A. africanus），在距今150万年以前的非洲撒哈拉以南地区（sub-Saharan Africa），可能就促成了次一个演化阶段的「巧人科」（Homo habilis）出现。後来，巧人又被更高大、更接近人类的「直立人科」（Homo erectus）取代，直立人的存活约为200万年前到25万年前，後来渐渐迁移到亚洲及欧洲部分地区。智人的原始型态在直立人身上已可看到，现代人的型态约是在40万年前出现在非洲及亚洲部分地区，但完整的现代人型态，则是在25万年到15万年前才出现，推测可能是由直立人递变而来的。

English version：

human evolution

Evolution of modern human beings from nonhuman and extinct hominid forms. Genetic evidence points to an evolutionary divergence between the lineages of humans and the great apes (Pongidae) on the African continent 5-8 million years ago. The oldest known hominid remains, dating to at least 4 million years ago, are classified as belonging to the genus Australopithecus and are found only in Africa. One of the australopithecines, either A. afarensis or A. africanus, probably gave rise to the species representing the next major evolutionary stage, Homo habilis, which inhabited sub-Saharan Africa until c. 1.5 million years ago. H. habilis, in turn, appears to have been supplanted by a taller and more human species, Homo erectus. This species lived from c. 2 million to 250,000 years ago and gradually migrated into Asia and parts of Europe. Archaic forms of Homo sapiens with features resembling those of both H. erectus and modern humans appeared c. 400,000 years ago in Africa and perhaps parts of Asia, but fully modern humans emerged only 250,000-150,000 years ago, probably descended from H. erectus.