★ listed in the Excellent Books Recommended for Teenagers in the Summer of 2020 by Shanxi Provincial Press and Publication Bureau
★ The origins, progress, and migration of humankind tell the history of human development, and many of these stories are thought-provoking, waiting for us to find the best answers.

This book tells the story of a series of processes that have been experienced by humans since the birth of creatures on earth, and humans have emerged from animals and evolved to modern humans. It involves the grandmother Lucy of archaeological discoveries, the creation of man by Nüwa in myths and legends, and Darwin’s scientific theory, describing the progress of apes from walking upright to making tools, human beings from Africa to all over the world, and the methods of studying human beings, such as fossil, genetic analysis and other technical means. It also tells the origin of the four ancient civilizations that we are familiar with, the sites and cultural characteristics of the Stone Age in China, the endless secrets of the civilization of the Yellow River Basin in China...

Ma Ran started to publish novella when she was in elementary school, and has won the Provincial Writing Award and the National New Thinking Award. She also has won the Bingxin Youth Essay Silver Award.

1 Grandma Lucy—the ancestor of humans 1
2 Nüwa created man—a Chinese legend 4
3 God created man—a Western legend 7
4 What is the story of Noah’s Ark 10
5 Lucy's upright pose 13
6 Endless fun pursuits 16
7 The Great Rift Valley 19
8 Homo sapiens are skillful stone makers 22
9 What did primitive people eat 25
10 Shocking Darwin 28
11 Asking fossils 31
12 A good example of contemporary fieldwork 34
13 Dubois the aggrieved scientist 37
14 The Peking Man corrected the name of the Java Man 40
15 Neanderthals discovered in Gibraltar 43
16 More about Neanderthals 46
17 The disappearance of Neanderthals and the appearance of homo sapiens 49
18 The amazing gene 52
19 The Neanderthal’s DNA 55
20 The inevitable attempt of Homo erectus 58
21 Paleolithic 61
22 The new skill age of the Paleolithic 64
23 Late Paleolithic 67
24 Olduvian Culture 70
25 Chinese Yuanmou Ape Man 73
26 Chinese Lantian Ape Man 76
27 The extinction of Tasmanians 79
28 The position of the throat for articulation 82
29 The language of the primitive man 85
30 Seven major languages families in the world 88
31 Chinese-Tibetan language family 91
32 The cultural distribution of the Paleolithic period in China 94
33 Ancient Basque dialect groups 97
34 Out of Africa (1)—to Australia 100
35 Out of Africa (2)—genetically marked migration routes 103
36 Out of Africa (3)—classification caused by gene mutations 106
37 Out of Africa (4)—the unintelligible thread 109
38 Piltdown Man—a famous fossil falsification story 112
39 Daily live in Neolithic Europe 115
40 Quaternary and Geological Chronology 118
41 The New Dryas octopetala L. Event and the 8200 Event 121
42 Chinese Neolithic Culture (1)—Peiligang Culture 124
43 Chinese Neolithic Culture (2)—Yangshao Culture 127
44 Chinese Neolithic Culture (3)—Liangzhu Culture 130
45 The matriarchal clan life of Banpo people 133
46 The Hemudu of the matrilineal clan 136
47 Civilization of the Mesopotamia 139
48 Ancient Egyptian Civilization 142
49 Ancient Indian Civilization 145
50 Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors (1) 148
51 Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors (2) 151
52 The civilization of the Yellow River Basin is endless 154