Humans first evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago from an earlier genus of apes called Australopithecus, which means ‘Southern Ape’. About 2 million years ago, some of these archaic men and women left their homeland to journey through and settle on the vast areas of North Africa, Europe and Asia. Since survival in the snowy forests of northern Europe required different traits than those needed to stay alive in Indonesia’s steaming jungles, human populations evolved in different directions. The result was several distinct species.

To the left you can see an image of what Australopithecus probably looked like. Note that this primate was only about the height of a human child. Image from Encyclopedia Britannica. 

Text in the following section has been adapted from the introductory chapter of Sapiens - by Yuval Harari