Question: who were the first people on earth? and how did they get there?

Alexandra Kamins answered on 22 Jun 2010:

great question–and it all depends on what you consider the first human! The biological story, as far as we can tell, around 4 million years ago some apes in Africa (over many generations) developed the ability to walk on two feet. There are dozens of arguments of why this happened. Change in a species, like apes, is caused over many years as certain apes do better in a given place and others don’t. But why was walking on two feet helpful? We don’t know for sure, though some guesses are that the forests that the apes used to climb around in disappeared, and the grasslands made anything that could stand up and looking around a much better fit.

Now, likely this creature didn’t think or act much like you and me at all. Over the next couple of million of years, this two-legged apes began to develop more and more human-like behaviours, like making and using tools. They think these early “hominids” (just a fancy word for human-like) began to use fire around 1.5 million years ago, and had a sort of culture where they buried their dead 300,000 years ago. Interestingly, there were actually multiple species of hominids. Only one of these survived to today as us! The first humans that would have been the same as us now showed up around 120,000 years ago. Here’s a fun site that might help answer more of your questions: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/evolution/

What makes us truly human, is perhaps outside of biology’s field. Are we human because we make art? Because we love? Because we have souls? Those questions are often answered personally, or by a religion. That’s why science doesn’t exist by itself!