Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest hominid found so far and was discovered in Aramis, in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia in 1994 by Tim White and his two colleagues, Gen Suwa and Berhane Asfaw.

In 1985, a cranium was found by Alan Walker at the west side of Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya and was named Australopithecus aethiopicus.

Until recently, the earliest known hominine for which sufficient diagnostic anatomical evidence was available was Australopithecus afarensis, fossils of which have been found in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya, and most of which date between 2.9 and 3.9 million years.

An Australian anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, named Raymond Dart, discovered the first australopithecine in November 1924 and published his interpretation of it in the journal Nature in February 1925.

This hominine species was discovered in 1994 by Maeve Leakey in Kanapoi and Allia Bay, situated in North Kenya.

In 1959, Mary Leakey made the first hominine discovery in East Africa at the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania which resembled the robust australopithecines already found in South Africa.

The first findings of Homo erectus fossils were made in the late 19th and early 20th century in Indonesia and China.

One of the most famous finds at Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya, is the cranium of an early species of Homo, known as Australopithecus boisei.

The early discoveries of early hominid fossils were made at Olduvai Gorge, by the Leakeys.

This species is often also referred to as "Archaic Homo Sapiens".

Neanderthals lived roughly 150,000 to 30,000 years ago and lived in much of Europe, part of Asia, and the Middle East.

In October 1993, an international team of paleontologists discovered a partial hominine mandible near Lake Malawi.

Population movements such as the colonisation of the Americas have occurred many times in human prehistory, and they inevitably muddy what might otherwise be a clear relationship between body shape and climate, and its change through time.