The Dawn & Dusk of Mankind: A Genesis based on biological evidence

The Genesis of mankind is a story that changes with the available knowledge. Here it is retold, based on recent biological facts and archaeological discoveries.We are mammals of the order of the primates. Our ancestors are apes and our closest relatives chimpanzees and bonobos. Two million years ago the species to which we belong, Homo erectus, evolved in Afrika: An upright walking carnivorous ape-man with large brains. This clever species started to conquer the world splitting frequently into subspecies that kept interbreeding until finally we, Homo erectus sapiens, remained as the only descendants. Using the large brains, it was able to evade natural selection processes and numbers kept growing to reach 8 billion individuals now. The downside of the extreme abundance becomes more and more clear. We changed the world by eliminating almost half of the large terrestrial mammalian species and use so much energy that we cause mass extinctions of entire terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems worldwide, meanwhile exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth during a period of global warming. Overpopulation is our main problem; solutions are not yet in sight.