Heart disease kills about a half-million people every year in the United States. It begins with the clogging of the arteries - which is called atherosclerosis. When there is too much saturated fat and trans fat in the bloodstream, it sticks to the walls, which narrows the passageway that blood must travel through.
The earliest known fossil of a human ancestor, a female Ardipithecus ramidus specimen nicknamed Ardi, is 3.2 million years old. Scientific evidence says that the first modern humans, Homo sapiens, appeared more than 200,000 years ago. Some fossils from the middle Pleistocene period (about 400,000 years ago), referred to as Homo sapiens rhodesiensis, may be archaic Homo sapiens - a transitional species.
Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. They entered Europe somewhat later, between 1.5 million and 1 million years. Species of modern humans populated many parts of the world much later. For instance, people first came to Australia probably within the past 60,000 years and to the Americas within the past 30,000 years or so. The beginnings of agriculture and the rise of the first civilizations occurred within the past 12,000 years.