About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.
About 300,000 years after their appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures, called atoms, which then combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules and their interactions is called chemistry.
About 3.8 billion years ago, on a planet called Earth, certain molecules combined to form particularly large and intricate structures called organisms. The story of organisms is called biology.
About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Home sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history.
Species that evolved from a common ancestor are bunched together under the heading 'genus'
Homo sapiens | Homo - genus, sapiens - species
We are members of a large family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. The chimpanzees are the closest.
Humans first evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago from an earlier genus of apes called "southern Ape" (南方古猿).
Humans in Europe and western Asia evolved into Neanderthals /nɪˈændətɑːl/.
