Human Evolution

It is obvious that many of us do not fully understand evolution. Please correct me if I am wrong.Evolution is descent with modification (Life can only come from life) and nature never has to start from scratch again right? Is this the correct interpretation in a nutshell? I realize that there is several factors involved in this process.
If true then the fact that I am here living right now, my ancestry goes back before I was classified as Human all the way back to the beginning of the first life on this planet. My line of descent would have many different names to describe who my ancestors were at any particular time frame in history. Humans evolved from many different lines of classification of humans, primates, and before that no one really knows due to lack of fossil evidence.
In other words the only way for me being alive today is because every generation in history lived long enough to produce the next generation that goes back to its origin.

Thank you for not making me feel stupid and answering my question in a direct manner.Now that we have established that my whole line of descent is firmly rooted in the tree of life's origin, would my DNA support this? Or through its course in history the genes used in the beginning have been deleted or changed for modification as time moved on so it would not be a reliable source?