Abstract
Man is a relatively new species, for although the first presumed hominids appeared some 15 million years ago, the remains of beings that might properly be considered those of Homo sapiens, are not more than 250000 years old. The rise of man as the most successful of all living species has thus been accomplished in a surprisingly small number of generations. Taking 15 years as the time needed for man to reach puberty, and extrapolating a similar span for our hominid ancestors, the time elapsed since the branching-off of the first hominid from the common hominid-ape stock encompasses 1 × 106 generations. This number may at first appear high; but the same number of generations would cover 250000 years with a small mammal, e.g. a mouse, which can reproduce at the age of three months. Furthermore, with bacteria capable of dividing under favourable conditions every twenty minutes, they could take as little as 76 years.
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Seuánez, H.N. (1979). Man, the Most Intelligent Ape. In: The Phylogeny of Human Chromosomes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67260-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67260-6_1
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