What is hominin?

Hominin is a group of creatures that includes humans and our close relatives from long ago.

Imagine you're playing with your cousins at a big family picnic, all of you are related, but you each have different ways of eating, playing, and moving around. That’s like what happened with hominins, they’re like the whole family of early humans and their close relatives.

Hominins are known for walking on two legs, just like you do when you run to grab your favorite snack. This is different from most other animals that walk on four legs, like dogs or cats. Walking on two legs helped our hominin family get smarter and more creative over time.

Some hominins looked very different from us, some had bigger teeth, or walked around with a hunchback, or even had hair all over their bodies like a fuzzy bear. But they were still part of the same big hominin family, just like you and your cousins are part of the same family.

Over millions of years, the hominin family changed and grew, until finally, we got to you!