Meet the ancestors
People have been debating the origins of our species - Homo sapiens - for hundreds of years. Our earliest human-like ancestors lived in Africa, where our closest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, still live today.
A human ancestor called Homo erectus was the first member of our family to leave Africa - up to 2 million years ago - and spread throughout Asia.
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| Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives - they share 99.4 per cent of our genetic material. |
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