Human evolution or hominization is the process of biological evolution of the human species from its ancestors to the present. The study of this process requires an interdisciplinary analysis in which knowledge from sciences such as genetics, physical anthropology, paleontology, stratigraphy, geochronology, archeology, and linguistics.
The term human, in this context, refers to individuals of the Homo sapiens species. Morphological, genetic and molecular evidence have determined that the closest living species to Homo sapiens is the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). In this way, the specific study of human evolution is the study of the lineage, or clade, which incorporates all species closer to modern humans than to chimpanzees. Molecular and paleontological evidence have estimated that the common ancestor between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes, lived in Africa between 5 to 7 million years (Ma). From this divergence, new species continued to emerge within the hominin lineage, all of them currently extinct with the exception of Homo sapiens.
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