ABSTRACT
Human evolution has advanced in recent decades, thanks to the large-scale cataloging of gene mutations among current and extinct populations. It appears that the relatives of chimpanzees and hominins diverged 7–9 million years ago (Mya), with some earlier hominins emigrating out of Africa; Homo sapiens gradually arose when climate change resulted in warmer, less wooded African environments. African population increased and evolved in a range of climates, with modest variation and selection levels in the human DNA but much higher mutation in mitochondrial DNA. Human populations, both in and out of Africa, adapted to various elements of their local envi- ronment, such as altitude, weather, UV exposure, nutrition, and diseases, leaving definite indications of gene variation in some instances. With some crossbreeding with archaic early humans and the alcohol sensitivity development as humans traveled throughout Eurasia, further substantial mitochondrial mutations occurred. The Neolithic period witnessed the most crucial nutritional alterations in human history, with new means of subsis- tence emerging and new nutrients being introduced to the diet. Several key nutritional modifications in the human evolution course took place due to the cultural development, ecosystem, and habitat changes, including meat 288eating, cooking food, and those linked to the animals’ and plants’ domestica- tion. The discovery of adaptation signals in the genomes of extant primates (including humans) may offer light not only on our species’ evolutionary past but also on the processes that support major metabolic problems in present human populations.
