Who was the first person on the Earth?

We were stood on the playground one morning and I was feeling relieved. We had had a good morning, rare very rare. Once again we were first on the playground – this is part of my son’s routine that he likes to be first so we were just stood discussing who would be next on the playground when the next people started arriving. The next parent was just in earshot when my son asked….

“Who was the first person on the Earth?”

The other parent looked at me as though to say wow but as you are probably aware this isn’t unusual for my son to ask these questions. And lately there has been a run of questions about the earth (What happens to the world after everyone dies? and When was the Earth first made?). And I understood how my son had made the leap from us discussing that we were first on the playground and who would be the next person on the playground to him wondering who the first person on the Earth was. The other kids on the playground are discussing dinosaurs or fairies, not my son. He wants an in depth conversation about who was the first person on Earth. A philosophical and scientific question all rolled into one at 8:30 in the morning. I told my son I would research it and get back to him and he went into school and I went to work. I never thought anymore of it, I had a busy day at work and when I got home it was tea and then bath for my son. It was while he was in the bath that he reminded me….

“Who was the first person to ever stand on the earth….remember I asked you this morning”

So while he sat in the bath we researched it. There was of course the biblical options of Adam and Eve. Adam was technically the first person to stand on earth. And Adam was created by God and features in various belief systems. I showed my son a picture from Google of Adam and Eve.

I thought he would wonder why they were half naked in this picture but he didn’t, he just asked…

“Why do they look so old?”

Because this happened around 6000 years ago!!  At least I think it did – I don’t quite understand the 6000BC. And to be honest I didn’t really want to delve too deep into this conversation so left this there and said Adam was just one option and we moved on to the next option.

We discovered that the other option was homo sapiens. Homo sapiens are the species that all other modern humans belong to and we basically evolved from primates to homo sapiens to the humans we are today. And I showed my son a picture on Google of a primate who progresses to a half man half monkey and then progresses to a man.

“Was it a monkey then half man then real man?”

“Yes, exactly”

At this point my husband comes in, my son is still in the bath, I am sat on the bathroom floor leant against the radiator and we are having a very deep discussion about homo sapiens and Adam and Eve and my husband looks at me quizzically. I give him a brief overview of the question and where we are at with it all when my son says to my husband….deadly serious….

“Yeah so there’s half man half monkey and it looks like that picture my mum showed me of you when you were a kid, you know the one where you had massive ears”…….