Human evolution

Anthropopithecus or pithecanthrope?
Our ancestors are considered to have been half-human or half-ape.

Thus, Sahelanthropus means "Human of the Sahel region," while Australopithecus translates to "Southern Ape."
Scientists only began to truly call them "humans" starting with the genus Homo, about 2.4 million years ago.
They group all the species above under the name Hominina.

Scientists have been telling us for centuries that bipedalism evolved slowly, over millions of years.
That doesn't make sense to me.
Walking on two legs is something you either do or you don't; there's no in-between.
The fossils show that the first humans walked on two feet.
It seems that bipedalism is the behavioral change that distinguished us from chimpanzees.

Looking at the chart at the top of this page, you can see that it all started with a single human species, which then diversified into more than twenty species, only to return to a single species 7 million years later.
Why?

Since bipedalism is an instantly recognizable trait, making it possible to easily identify any other human.
Did all those early humans congregate to form one big family?
Judging by our history, it would seem that our ancestors rather quickly put to death anything that walked on two legs that they encountered.

There is no way we can figure out the path our own race took through this adventure.
All these human types were inter-breeding.
That's why I call them all «humans», even though some were quite different from us.
We know their fate; we exterminated them all.
But, they are still part of our history and our genes.