![]() ![]() The discovery that all human beings on earth are descendants of one woman, the African 'Eve' who lived not more than 200,000 years ago has extended the Darwinian biological worldview into a unifying philosophical perspective. The study of these fossil ancestors combined with the molecular dating techniques based on the analysis of mutations in mitochondrial and Y-Chromosomal DNA have vindicated Darwin's worldview of the origin of humans in Africa, as well as his suggestion that the great apes are the closest living ancestors of Homo sapiens. Today paleoanthropologists work with more than twenty species of hominins. A Neanderthal fossil was the only hominin remain known at the time of Darwin. Darwin's graphic representation of relationships between organisms is now employed to construct phylogenetic trees at all levels of biological organization. However, discoveries in every branch of biology since the time of Darwin have affirmed the essential unity of life, including the 30 million or more extant species and more than 600 million extinct species. ![]() How, when and where life originated remains an inscrutable challenge to science. Darwin saw human beings as an integral part of this evolutionary history. The biological revolution that Darwin initiated has given us a view of an earth that was once devoid of life and where life originated and evolved from simpler preexisting forms over immense periods of time.
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