A new study suggests that the earliest anatomically modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago in what was once a vast wetland that sprawled across Botswana in southern Africa. Later shifts in climate opened up green corridors to the northeast and southwest, leading our ancestors to spread through Africa.
The First Men arrive from Essos to Westeros, a land occupied for centuries by the small human-like creatures named the Children of the Forest. The First Men take over their land and cut down Weirwood trees that are sacred to the Children. The Children and the First Men go to war for several centuries.
The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago. Then some of them spread from Africa into Asia and Europe after two million years ago.
The Old Tongue – This was spoken by the First Men, who came before the Andals, but today the language is hardly known by anyone outside of giants and a few wildlings.
Researchers have long debated when humans starting talking to each other. Estimates range wildly, from as late as 50,000 years ago to as early as the beginning of the human genus more than 2 million years ago.
The first theory is that language started with people making different sounds, mostly imitating the things around them, like animal calls, nature sounds and the sounds of tools. Eventually they started using these sounds to talk to each other.
The ironborn, who are considered by most to descend from the First Men, worshiped the Drowned God before the Andals came, and continue to do so. In addition, they also continue to believe in the Drowned God's eternal enemy, the Storm God.
The White Walkers were originally First Men themselves, before being captured by the Children of the Forest to be changed into weapons. The Children of the Forest pressed dragonglass daggers into the chests of these First Men to create the first White Walkers.
The Andals that invaded the Westerlands married the female descendants of Lann the Clever, a legendary hero of the First Men, and House Lannister descends from this union.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
Our species, Homo sapiens, has now spread to all parts of the world but it's generally believed that we originated in Africa by about 200,000 years ago. We interacted with local archaic human populations as we colonised the globe.
The likely "first human", she says, was Homo erectus. These short, stocky humans were a real stayer in human evolutionary history. Estimates vary, but they're thought to have lived from around 2 million to 100,000 years ago, and were the first humans to walk out of Africa and push into Europe and Asia.
Hominins first appear by around 6 million years ago, in the Miocene epoch, which ended about 5.3 million years ago.
A non-human race, the Children of the Forest were the original inhabitants of Westeros, long before the First Men migrated to the continent over 12,000 years ago. When the First Men arrived and began cutting down the forests, the Children defended themselves in a several brutal wars over the course of 2,000 years.
Then, after Aegon's Conquest, Westeros was divided up into nine provinces that were each part of a greater realm: The North, the Vale of Arryn, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, the Westerlands, the Stormlands, the Reach, the Crownlands and Dorne. Despite this, it became the style to refer to it as the Seven Kingdoms.
She said some people believe Night's King was a Bolton, a Magnar of Skagos, an Umber, a Flint, a Norrey, or a Woodfoot. However, she identifies Night's King as a Stark of Winterfell and brother to the King of Winter and suggests his name was Brandon.
No, the Night King is not a Targaryen.
In the books, however, the story of the Night King is slightly different. The Night King isn't the leader of the White Walkers. Instead, he's a legendary historical figure who supposedly betrayed the Night's Watch to marry a “corpse queen” and then crowned himself a king.
Based on what we've seen, the White Walkers are at least 8,000 years old: In season six, we learned that the Children of the Forest created the very first Walker as a weapon to combat the first men to arrive on Westeros. (They did so by plunging a piece of dragonglass into a man's heart.)
To find out the availability or access to vital records where your ancestors lived, check with the state's vital records office. Some vital records can be found on the major genealogy databases such as Ancestry.com, FindMyPast and MyHeritage.
A descendant is a person born in a direct biological line. For example, a person's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are their descendants.
Common ancestors
In families, to descend means to "come from." You descend from your parents, who descend from their parents, who descend from their parents, and so on. That chain of parents and children are your ancestors.
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden.
This earliest form of the language was Sumerian cuneiform, which consisted of “wedge-shaped” glyphs. We don't know which exact words came first in this language, but based on example charts showing the evolution of Sumerian cuneiform, it may have been symbols for god, earth, man or woman.
Sumerian can be considered the first language in the world, according to Mondly. The oldest proof of written Sumerian was found on the Kish tablet in today's Iraq, dating back to approximately 3500 BC.