Until very recently, erythrocytes have been considered unable to undergo apoptosis, as they lack mitochondria and nuclei, key organelles in the apoptotic machinery of other cells. However, in most recent observations it does not seem to be the truth.The major spinning point in this research was finding caspases (cysteine proteases), that play the major role in programmed cell death, in humans mature erythrocytes. This article shows the progress of apoptosis in different stadia of humans erythro- cytes development as well as in several pathological stadia. With regard to the evolutionary aspect the programmed cell death in erythrocytes of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals was also discussed.