Our Ancestors

This article was published in Akahata, the newspaper of the Japanese Communist Party, on January 11, 2026.

Approximately 445 million years ago, the Earth cooled, resulting in the disappearance of approximately 85% of marine species. Recent research has revealed that among the surviving marine organisms, jawed vertebrates rapidly emerged, giving rise to fish. From these jawed vertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals emerged.

Additional: The origin of life is a quantum fluctuation that occurred before the Big Bang. This triggered the birth of matter and the universe. The current leading hypothesis is that this matter flowed to Earth, where life arose in hydrothermal vents. And thus, humans evolved from fish.