With somewhat less certainty, most scientists think that people who look like us -- anatomically modern Homo sapiens -- evolved by at least 130,000 years ago from ancestors who had remained in Africa. Their brain had reached today's size.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/science/when-humans-became-human.html
Though not relevant to the “First Human” question, for the benefit of some readers who objected to the above, I feel I should also mention the following related issues. No, the chimps aren’t our ancestors; but we share a common ancestor with the chimps. So, we are like “cousins” with them.
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/1st/1sthuman.htm
And the theory of evolution explains these facts. It says, for example, that our common ancestor with the chimps lived more recently than our common ancestor with the gorilla. It is as if we are first cousins with the chimps, but second cousins with the gorillas (and third cousins with the orangutans, and so on).
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/1st/1sthuman.htm
Correction: March 2, 2002, Saturday A chart in Science Times on Tuesday about the roots of modern human behavior misstated the origin of three small beads that were examples of early artifact diversity from Africa. They were created in what is now Tanzania 55,000 years ago, not in Congo 90,000 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/science/when-humans-became-human.html
On the biggest steps in early human evolution scientists are in agreement. The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago. Then some of them spread from Africa into Asia and Europe after two million years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/science/when-humans-became-human.html
But the point is that, not only it doesn’t matter which language we use as example, but also the analogy carries over to what we are interested at: just as there was no first speaker of a modern language, there was no First Human either. And the analogy is true even in some of its details!
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/1st/1sthuman.htm
Then, within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings. Humans found they could control the growth and breeding of certain plants and animals.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens
But if we take a pair where the ancestor is from around 300 BC, and the descendant from around 200 AD (making a difference of 500 years), these two people would not be able to communicate (or, in reality, the communication would be extremely limited). Is there any point in time that we can single out and say, “There!
http://www.foundalis.com/bio/1st/1sthuman.htm
We most likely evolved from Homo heidelbergensis, the common ancestor we share with Neanderthals, who are our closest extinct relatives. Cro-Magnon 1. Cro-Magnon 1 is a middle-aged, male skeleton of one of the first modern human fossils ever found, at Cro-Magnon, France in 1868. Scientists estimate his age at death at less than 50 years old. Except for the teeth, his skull is complete, though the bones in his face are noticeably pitted from a fungal infection.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens
During a time of dramatic climate change 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. Like other early humans that were living at this time, they gathered and hunted food, and evolved behaviors that helped them respond to the challenges of survival in unstable environments. Anatomically, modern humans can generally be characterized by the lighter build of their skeletons compared to earlier humans.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens
when did the first humans
The first humans were in 200,000 years ago.