Human Evolution Maps

Six million years ago hominins split from a common ancestor with chimps. Fossils finds reveal that hominins then diversified into many different species, including one, 'Homo sapiens sapiens' which developed and eventually spread all around the world.

The New Scientist has released an interactive map of early hominin fossil finds. How the Upright Ape Conquered the World displays the locations of important fossil finds in hominin evolution. The markers on the map are colored to represent the age of the fossils. If you select a marker on the map you can click through to read more about the fossil finds in the New Scientist.


Карта местонахождений is a Russian language anthropological Google Map that also highlights the locations of the earliest evidence of man found around the world.

This map of human evolution catalogs important palaeontological discoveries across the globe. Users can filter the results shown on the map by type of hominid and click on individual map markers to read about specific finds. Each information window includes a link to read a more detailed account of the evidence found at each location.


MapTime is a visualization tool for deep time. 'Deep time' represents events that occurred perhaps millions / billions of years ago. MapTime includes a mapped visualization of deep time using the Google Maps API.

A good example of a deep time visualization is the Organic Evolution Timeline which represents the evolution on life on earth from the beginning of single celled life until the present day as a journey on Google Maps. For example, if you imagine the time-line as a journey from Washington to San Francisco with Washington representing the formation of the Earth, then the emergence of the human race occurs nearly at the end of your journey in the middle of San Francisco.

One of the beauties of MapTime is that you can set your own starting point and destination for your visualization. This allows you to create a time-line that is familiar to your target audience.