Stages of human evolution
Human evolution · Biology
Study notes
'Lucy' (Australopithecus afarensis, 3.2 million years old, found 1974 in Ethiopia) walked upright but had a chimp-sized brain — bipedalism came before big brains. Neanderthal DNA lives on: non-Africans carry 1–2% Neanderthal genes (immunity, skin). The 2022 Nobel Prize went to Svante Pääbo for sequencing ancient human genomes — reading evolution from bones.