Human Evolution Timeline: Hominins in Order, 7 Million Years

The human evolution timeline runs like this: Sahelanthropus and Orrorin about 7 to 6 million years ago, Ardipithecus about 4.4 million, Australopithecus (including the famous Australopithecus afarensis) from about 4.2 to 2 million, Paranthropus from about 2.7 million, Homo habilis from about 2.4 million, Homo erectus from about 1.9 million, then Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo naledi and Homo floresiensis, and finally Homo sapiens at about 300,000 years ago. The sections below give the date, the place and the key fossil for each.

Human evolution is a branching bush, not a ladder. Several species lived at the same time on the same continent, so "order" here means the order in which each one first appears. All dates are approximate and change when new fossils turn up.

Hominin vs hominid: what is the difference?

Most people searching "hominins in order" or "hominídeos" get stuck on these two words first.

• Hominid (family Hominidae): the great apes and humans together. Orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, humans, and their extinct relatives.
• Hominin (tribe Hominini): only the human side of the family tree after it split from the chimpanzee line, roughly 6 to 7 million years ago. Every species in the table below is a hominin.

Older textbooks used "hominid" for what is now called a hominin, so you will see both in old sources. Today there is exactly one living hominin species: us.

Human evolution timeline table

Dates come from stratigraphy and radiometric dating, and the error is often tens of thousands of years. For some species, the date of extinction is still not settled.

The earliest hominins: about 7 to 4 million years ago

Sahelanthropus tchadensis. In 2001 a skull was found in Chad and nicknamed "Toumai", meaning "hope of life". It lived about 7 million years ago, has a flatter face than a chimpanzee, and its teeth lean toward hominin traits. Researchers think it may be one of the earliest hominins. Whether it walked upright is still argued.

Orrorin tugenensis. Found in 2000 in the Tugen Hills of Kenya, about 6 million years old. The shape of the thigh bone suggests it may already have walked upright.

Ardipithecus. "Ardi" from Ethiopia is about 4.4 million years old and unusually complete. Her pelvis allowed walking on the ground, while her big toe could still grip branches like a thumb. Early hominins seem to have spent time both on the ground and in the trees.

All three are known from few individuals, so each new find shifts the details. Treat "the first hominin" as a current best guess, not a settled fact.

Australopithecus: small brain, upright walk

Australopiths appear about 4.2 million years ago and lasted for more than two million years in Africa.

• Australopithecus anamensis: about 4.2 to 3.9 million years ago, Kenya.
• Australopithecus afarensis: about 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago. The best-known fossil is "Lucy", found in 1974 by Donald Johanson and colleagues at Hadar, Ethiopia, about 3.2 million years old. She stood about 1.1 metres tall, with a brain about the size of a chimpanzee's, yet she walked upright. A trail of footprints in volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania, about 3.6 million years old, shows upright walking that early (Leakey and Hay, Nature 1979). Johanson and White placed afarensis on the family tree in Science in 1979.
• Australopithecus africanus: about 3 to 2 million years ago, South Africa. The Taung Child skull, found in 1924, was the first australopith fossil. Raymond Dart described it in Nature in 1925 and argued that our ancestors came from Africa and walked upright before their brains grew.

Australopiths are not in the genus Homo. Most researchers think Homo evolved from one of them.

Paranthropus: a cousin on a different path

Paranthropus appears about 2.7 million years ago and died out about 1.2 million years ago. It had huge, flat molars and a bony crest on top of the skull anchoring strong chewing muscles, suited to tough plant food. It shared East Africa with early Homo. It is a distant cousin, not a direct ancestor.

The genus Homo: habilis to erectus

Homo habilis. First named at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and dated to roughly 2.4 to 1.4 million years ago. The name means "handy man", because stone tools lay next to the fossils and it was long thought to be the first toolmaker. Later finds undercut that: stone tools at Lomekwi 3 in Kenya are about 3.3 million years old, older than the genus Homo (Harmand et al., Nature 2015). Toolmaking did not start with Homo.

Homo erectus. Appears about 1.9 million years ago and is the first human to leave Africa. Dmanisi in Georgia has fossils about 1.8 million years old, and "Peking Man" in China is also Homo erectus. The most complete skeleton is the Turkana Boy, found in Kenya in 1984, about 1.5 million years old. Homo erectus had a body close to ours, with long legs for long-distance walking. On fire: ash and burnt bone in Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa, show early humans using fire inside the cave about a million years ago (Berna et al., PNAS 2012).

Australopithecus afarensis, Paranthropus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus: which came first?

This is a common exam question: "Arrange these ancient humans in order of evolutionary time: Australopithecus afarensis, Paranthropus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus."

The answer:

1. Australopithecus afarensis (from about 3.9 million years ago)
2. Paranthropus (from about 2.7 million years ago)
3. Homo habilis (from about 2.4 million years ago)
4. Homo erectus (from about 1.9 million years ago)

To remember it: australopiths first, then Paranthropus and Homo branch off at nearly the same time, and within Homo, habilis comes before erectus. If Homo sapiens is on the list, it goes last.

The order is by first appearance. These species overlapped, and Paranthropus, habilis and erectus shared East Africa for a time. Coming first does not mean being the ancestor of the next one.

Archaic humans: heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans

Homo heidelbergensis. About 700,000 to 200,000 years ago, with fossils from Germany (the Mauer jaw, 1907), Zambia and elsewhere. Many researchers treat it as the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens, though that grouping is debated.

Neanderthals. About 400,000 to 40,000 years ago in Europe and western Asia. They used fire, made complex tools and buried their dead. The 2010 draft Neanderthal genome (Green et al., Science) showed that people outside Africa today carry roughly 1 to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA. The two groups interbred.

Denisovans. In 2010, DNA from a finger bone in Denisova Cave, Siberia, revealed a previously unknown human group (Krause et al., Nature 2010; Reich et al., Nature 2010). Tibetans carry a Denisovan version of the EPAS1 gene that helps with life at altitude. A 2025 study indicates the Harbin skull from China, found in 1933 and named "Dragon Man" in 2021, is also Denisovan.

Small bodies, odd places: naledi, floresiensis, luzonensis

Homo naledi. Found in 2013 deep in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, with more than 1,500 fossils. Dirks et al. (eLife, 2017) dated them to about 335,000 to 236,000 years ago, so naledi lived alongside early Homo sapiens in Africa. The brain is small, yet the body has many Homo features.

Homo floresiensis. Published in 2004 (Brown et al., Nature), from Flores, Indonesia. About 1 metre tall, nicknamed "the hobbit". The first dating said 18,000 years; later study of the layers moved it to about 100,000 to 60,000 years ago (Sutikna et al., Nature 2016).

Homo luzonensis. Found on Luzon, Philippines, in 2019, at least 50,000 years old, also small-bodied.

All three lived in isolated places, islands or caves, and show how many kinds of humans were around when sapiens spread.

Homo sapiens: us

Homo sapiens appears in Africa about 300,000 years ago. Fossils from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco pushed the history of our species back by about 100,000 years to roughly 300,000 (Hublin et al., Nature 2017), and suggest sapiens emerged across the whole of Africa rather than in one small corner. All human mitochondrial DNA traces back to a woman who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago (Cann, Stoneking and Wilson, Nature 1987).

Sapiens left Africa and spread across the continents by about 70,000 years ago, meeting Neanderthals and Denisovans on the way. A painting of a pig on Sulawesi, at least 45,500 years old, is one of the oldest known figurative artworks (Brumm et al., Science Advances 2021).

On the scale of the universe: squeeze 13.8 billion years into one calendar year, and Homo sapiens at 300,000 years ago arrives at about 11:48 pm on December 31. Sahelanthropus, 7 million years ago, shows up around 7:30 pm that evening. You can see how late we arrive on the cosmic calendar.

Keep exploring in the wiki and the game

The wiki has a page with each member and its sources: the hominin family tree. The seven key events of the era (upright walking, stone tools, fire, sapiens, language, leaving Africa, cave painting) are on the Human Origins era page. The story continues in the Civilization era. For where humans sit among all life, see the tree of life; for what sapiens did next, see languages and writing systems.

To play through it yourself, start the Human Origins era in Cosmos Era: the resource is population, and the generators run from primate groups to foraging, tribes and migration. The game numbers are tuned for fun, and real evolution was far messier. Play now.

FAQ

How did humans originate?

About 6 to 7 million years ago, an African ape lineage split from the ancestors of chimpanzees and became the hominin line. Upright walking came first; bigger brains, stone tools and fire came later. Homo sapiens appeared in Africa about 300,000 years ago and spread across the world.

Are humans descended from apes?

Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, which was an ape. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, and they are not our ancestors. After the split, each side evolved for six or seven million years.

Who was the first hominin?

The current candidates are Sahelanthropus (about 7 million years ago), Orrorin (about 6 million) and Ardipithecus (from about 5.8 million). Which is earliest, and which are real ancestors, is still debated.

How are Homo sapiens and Neanderthals related?

They were different species that lived at the same time and interbred. People outside Africa carry about 1 to 2 percent Neanderthal DNA (Green et al., Science 2010). Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago.

Why does every date say "about"?

Fossil dates come from dating methods with errors of tens of thousands of years, and new fossils can shift the start and end dates. Homo floresiensis, for example, was first dated to 18,000 years ago and later moved to about 100,000 to 60,000.