Conventional wisdom on the origin of the human species is that, 4 million years ago in Africa, a little creature just over a meter tall emerged from the evolutionary melting pot, and stood up.

   The first such creature to be discovered received the name "Lucy"--later changed to Australopithecus afarensis. Lucy had knee joints that allowed her to straighten her legs. Also she made footprints that confirmed that she stood up. Dating of fossils beyond 200,000yrs old is not easy. It is generally done indirectly by dating the ground where they are found--for Lucy at about 4 million years B.P. (before the present). (Note: radio-active dating has since been revolutionized by the discovery of zircon technology)

   Lucy had a skull more ape-like than human and was probably no smarter than the average ape. Fossil remains of two other primate-like species found in Africa, Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus are thought to have been evolutionary dead ends.  Supposedly Lucy and her buddies gave rise to the next step, named Homo habilis (handy man). H. habilis was a tool maker, may have appeared about 2.5 million years B.P., looked something like Lucy, but had a larger brain. He/she was about 1.5 meters tall, under 45 kg, probably a scavenger, and supposedly gave rise to the next evolutionary jump called Homo erectus. This guy was more advanced so is measured in feet and inches--5ft 6in. to be precise. He was almost indistinguishable from modern man except for a flattened forehead, prominent brow ridges and no chin. Conventional wisdom has him originating in Africa around 2 million B.P. He was supposed to have taken a long time to get out of Africa and to migrate to Java (1 million B.P) and Peking. When Java man was re-dated to 2 million B.P. in 1970, the work was at first ignored. New dating puts two Java fossils at 1.8 and 1.7 million B.P., is probably reliable, but was unwelcome as it did not fit conventional wisdom.

   How does this tie in to Andon and Fonta (about 1,000,000 B.P.) or Adam and Eve (37,898 B.P.)?

     Many (most?) readers think that the Urantia Book claims that Andon and Fonta were the sole ancestral parents of all of us. In fact, it does not. It says: "Even the loss of Andon and Fonta before they had offspring, though delaying human evolution, would not have prevented it. Subsequent to the appearance of Andon and Fonta, and before the mutating potentials of animal life were exhausted, there evolved no less than seven thousand favorable strains which could have achieved some sort of human type of development. And many of these better stocks were subsequently assimilated by the various branches of the expanding human species." (734).

So how and where did mankind arise?

   There appears to be little doubt that the origins of mankind were in Africa for there is to be found there, a group of hominid fossils belonging to the genus Australopithecus, any one of which may have been a forebear of the genus Homo--the one to which we belong, and fossils from which is also widely represented in Africa.

   The Urantia Book informs us that man arose just under 1 million years ago, and denies that it had a direct African ancestry. Also it places the origin of the modern types of simian--monkeys, baboons, chimpanzee, and gorilla--in the vicinity of one million years ago, and not in Africa but on a Mesopotamian peninsular. Science places this divergence as occurring in Africa about 5 to 6 million years ago.