All of Human History in One Hour

[00:00] The modern human is at least 200,000 years old  - 10,000 generations of knowledge and memories. The last Millenium just a tiny speck and your  whole life is basically invisible in comparison.

[00:16] So heres an experiment: every second  2 generations or 50 years will pass. You are on a musical train ride looking out the  window, as you watch our ancestors hunt large

[00:28] animals, tell stories around campfires  and slowly spread around the globe. You can have this in the background,  study with it or just enjoy the ride.

[00:40] But before we start something  very important to us: people’s well-being in some of  the world's poorest communities.

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[01:06] cuts in real time — identifying highly  cost-effective ways to save and improve lives, and sharing what they’re learning for free,  so that everyone can have a big impact. Thanks to GiveWell for making  videos like this possible!

[01:22] Glacial sheets are rampant and deserts expand. But sheltered from all this is East Africa,  which remains temperate and comfortable.

[01:34] The earliest skeletal remains suggest  the first Homo Sapiens step foot into the world at least 200,000 years  ago, perhaps even 300,000 years ago.

[01:47] All humans descend directly through their  mothers from a woman who lived at this time, based on DNA in our cells' mitochondria.

[02:06] We were already great hunters,  wielding spears and fire, huddling under animal skins and living  in communities that shared joy and death.

[02:47] distances and even carried obsidian hundreds  of kilometers to turn into cutting tools.

[04:55] They lived side-by-side with multiple other  hominins, some millions of years older than us. It's unclear.

[05:11] Our natural desire to wander  takes us all around the continent,   from the Mediterranean coast  down to the tip of South Africa.

[05:24] One major obstacle slowed down  our progression: the deserts. With no water to drink nor animals to hunt, we  didn't know how to cross these difficult regions.

[05:47] Not everyone fitted the same  mold, just like people today. The majority of Homo Sapiens stayed  in Africa, but a few intrepid souls were leaving the continent by 180,000 years  ago, which we know about because they met

[06:00] Neanderthals and interbred, leaving  genetic traces and a fossil record. We think that in arid regions,  humans would congregate around oases. our ancestors might have been able to  occasionally cross impossible deserts.

[07:12] specifically to live under  the protection of our hair. we get the earliest evidence that we  started to wear clothes on our bodies.

[08:06] There was no general planning, and it was just  as likely to go forwards as to retrace its steps. then we'd never visit it even if it  was right next to our birthplace.

[08:21] The island of Madagascar,  separated from Africa by sea, remained untouched until 2000  years ago for this reason.

[10:33] One of our greatest strengths is our adaptability. we would instead find new ways of living. Like when we moved into the African  coasts to escape the worst of this ice

[10:47] age and had to rediscover everything  about how to hunt or find shelter.

[11:10] It's hard to see technological  progress this far back. Hardening pointy sticks in a fire seems so  simple, yet it was huge progress for this time.

[11:50] Walking down the beach looking for shellfish,  our ancestors sometimes collected pretty shells. We know they had an eye for beauty, just like us.

[12:38] Remains of burnt snail shells from 170,000 years ago suggest we caught giant gastropods  and turned them into roasted snacks.

[13:34] One ancestor's trash is a paleoarcheologist's treasure. 164,000 year old leftovers containing shellfish reveal that humans learnt to exploit marine resources back then.

[14:44] The hominins likely descended  from tree-dwelling apes, and we still found trees quite  neat millions of years later. so we kept returning to them whenever we could.

[15:10] Despite all of our tricks,  sharp sticks and hiding spots, Bears, hyenas and lions larger than anything we  see today challenged our status as top hunters.

[15:37] The real paleo diet: roasted seeds,  crushed tubers, and a lot of meat. Nothing could be preserved for later,  so if you came across tasty fruit, Thankfully, we could reach the  roughly 3000 calories needed per day.

[17:00] Our ancestors had a hunter-gatherer  lifestyle that's difficult to imagine today. with the rest spent socializing,  playing and perhaps painting.

[17:12] Except you never knew when your next meal was  coming, or if tomorrow's hunt would be your last.

[19:26] that our ancestors could walk along  to more quickly cross vast distances. They would have a reliable source of water and  they attracted animals to prey on for food.

[20:08] Whole branches of hominins lost to  time, like 140,000 year old Homo Longi that was only recently discovered from  a Chinese skull and may rewrite our history.

[22:25] An unusually long and wet period called the  Abbassia Pluvial transforms deserts into swamps and rivers across Africa, helping  more humans move across the continent.

[23:20] Our expansion takes us across the  Miditerranean sea, to the island of Crete. Did we swim or build rafts? We only find watercraft dated  tens of thousands of years later,

[23:36] yet skeletal remains on the island  mean we must have found a way.

[23:50] Just like artists today, we've  always wanted to express ourselves. The oldest evidence for Homo  Sapiens painting dates back to 125,000 year old red ochre made from  pigmented clay found in South Africa,

[24:04] though we used it on our surroundings  and our bodies much earlier than that. Sadly, we've lost these  earliest works of art to time. We also find shells perforated so they  can be strung together at this time,

[24:17] Ancient bling!

[24:54] we find footprints of humans among those  of many animals dated to 120,000 years ago. The whole Arabian Peninsula was covered  in green grass and wetlands at this time,

[25:07] making it an ideal environment  for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

[25:23] The oldest abstract symbols are  120,000 year old bone markings. They're definitely calculated and  intentional, but what do they mean?

[28:00] Homo Erectus, our longest living  cousin, goes extinct around this time, and with them goes their culture  and 1.7 million years of history.

[28:25] accelerating human expansion out  of Africa from a trickle to a wave. land bridges existed that led them along  surprising paths between continents!

[28:41] However, our expansion isn't some coordinated  push in one direction but random movements that are just as likely to leave as to return to  Africa with multiple overlapping migrations.

[31:23] was through the Arabian Peninsula,  leading to modern day Turkey and Iran. Despite the challenge, they mastered the  mountainous areas they encountered there.

[31:37] This is when we developed a taste for  starch: roots, starchy vegetables, and seeds are added to our diet and  our mouth bacteria adapted to them.

[32:49] Our ancestors tried to preserve their  knowledge and remember their past. The oldest Homo Sapien burial  site is 100,000 years old, containing skeletons and numerous burial goods.

[33:20] inner worlds by painting more  than we see with our own eyes. Instead of simple representations of nature,  we find the first symbolic paintings.

[33:50] Complex behaviour required  equally capable communication. We very likely had languages we could  use to chat with other human groups. so might we have tried to chat  each other up when we met?

[34:05] This capacity for culture and abstract  thought is engraved in our genes. We can analyze DNA to determine what gives us  our personality, and it's clear that creative self-awareness is a special feature  we have that other hominins lacked.

[34:23] The oldest piece of string is 90,000 years  old, and it belonged to Neanderthals. Could we have asked to trade for it?

[35:38] But quickly, we learnt to go further and  change the environment to suit us instead. we burnt down forests and cleared vegetation  to make our own hunting or foraging easier.

[36:50] Africa's northern regions remained  green and pleasant for a very long time. "Green Corridor" out of Africa,  resulting in more encounters with Neanderthals and thus a lot more of  their DNA in our genetic material.

[37:26] As humans crossed into Asia, their  territory expanded vertically too. winds to find themselves in caves  2000 to 3000 meters above sea level.

[37:50] to expand our food repertoire and  increase our chances of survival. Specialized tools like spears with barbed points  allowed Homo Sapiens to fish in rivers and lakes.

[38:20] had properties that weren't visible or tangible. and added them for example to bedding  for their insect-repelling effect.

[39:03] Catastrophe! The Toba supereruption in  Indonesia radically alters the climate, causing the human population to shrink to less  than 10,000 individuals: a genetic bottleneck.

[39:15] find reliable shelter and were just lucky  enough to live in less affected areas.

[39:50] We probably had to spend more time in  caves when weather outside worsened. That gave us time to work on our stone  engraving skills and abstract paintings.

[40:25] For generations, humans climbed mountains  and crossed wide open plains while travelling across Asia, but when they transitioned  to the dense jungles of Southeast Asia, they had to come up with an entirely  new lifestyle to handle them.

[40:38] Prey was much harder to find and  track, the fruit were unfamiliar, and predators could pounce from  every bush or drop down from above. Yet, we thrived in there.

[40:50] Human rituals continued to  grow stranger and more complex. python made of carved rock 70,000 years ago.

[41:20] thousands of years meant there  were many fruitful encounters. so often that 1-4% of our modern  genetic makeup comes from them.

[42:05] Paleolithic humans were rock nerds: they  could distinguish between different types of stones and chose specific types  of flint to make their tools with, even discarding easier sources  for higher quality ones.

[42:31] Our growing creativity also had a practical side. We developed bows and arrows 61,000 years ago,  helping make our hunting even more efficient.

[43:20] Better technology allowed us to overcome obstacles  that used to be barriers to human expansion. We used it to build simple rafts, which  we could use to cross the expanses of water separating islands in Southeast  Asia, which were much smaller than today.

[43:34] This allowed Homo Sapiens to  make their way into Indonesia, New Guinea and the Australian continent,  each a new alien world to our ancestors.

[43:50] While some groups bore the humid heat in Oceania, others hemmed in by glaciers in Central  Europe pushed back against the cold to expand into Western Europe and North  Asia, reaching as far as Siberia.

[44:20] Our travels put us into contact  with more of our hominin cousins. that has left its own specific genetic mark.

[44:50] new territories wasn't good  news for the local wildlife. A widespread extinction of megafauna  has been blamed on human hunting, that leaves land mammals  smaller, rarer or extinct.

[46:00] Populations arrived in New Guinea more than  50,000 years ago, and we have evidence that they cleared forests using stone axes to  make foraging for nuts and yams easier.

[46:23] Starting 50,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens  underwent a cultural revolution. The changes were so significant we distinguish  anatomically modern humans that just looked like us, from behaviourally modern humans  that thought and acted like us too.

[46:38] technology and complex behaviours  that leave, for example, better cave art.

[47:25] and well adapted to the new  environments we encountered. By 45,000 years ago, we became experts  in hunting monkies and squirrels, We find them in large numbers  inside caves in Sri Lanka.

[48:20] We love them so much that we find traces of human activity inside them across the  whole world, whenever we look. They're great natural protection  against the dangerous world outside,

[48:34] Cover the entrance, get a fire going and  you've got a ready made home for your family.

[48:53] The first statue ever is 40,000 years old. It's the Lion Man, depicting a human figure  with a lion head, found in a cave in Germany. Homo Sapiens' arrival was so impactful that  other species started adapting to them.

[49:09] Or, as the clever fox did, followed bands of  humans and picked through their leftovers. The oldest musical instrument is the Hohle  Fels Flute also discovered in a German cave.

[49:21] up to 40,000 years old, and it tells us  what kind of music filled our nights.

[49:49] Around this time, Homo Sapiens is also  carving the first human figurines. The oldest we've found is the Hohle Fels Venus,  carved from mammoth ivory in the same region.

[50:45] they disappear from the fossil  record around 35,000 years ago. them to go extinct in the same  territories that humans occupied.

[51:09] A skull was found with a depressed fracture, suggesting someone was clubbed  in the head 33,000 years ago. Humanity's best friends are also very old friends.

[51:24] identical to wolves except for behaviour  and diet when their domestication started.

[51:50] The Aurignacian peoples in Europe develop advanced technology like fine stone blades, and the oldest human sculptures called  Venus figurines from clay 31,000 years ago.

[52:10] We upgrade our clothes into multi-layered  form-fitting outfits and add actual shoes, helping us push further into the remaining  inhospitable regions of the world.

[52:55] It's harder to trace, but textile  industries also continued to improve. making comes from flax fibers  wound together 30,000 years ago.

[53:31] Human history is punctuated by catastrophes  but they seem to affect us less and less. The Oruanui supervolcano erupts  in New Zealand 25,700 years ago, darkening the entire Southern  hemisphere but we get through it.

[54:13] Cave bears go extinct around 24,000 years ago. And more caves for our ancestors to take over.

[54:25] Long before actual farming starts,  Neolithic peoples in the Middle East These hunter-gatherer societies practiced  'proto-farming' where they intentionally  

[54:38] gathered plants they liked to eat  like barley and helped them grow.

[54:58] The Last Glacial Maximum from 20,000 years ago reduced sea levels by 120 meters and  covered 25% of Earth's land in ice. But, it also allowed us to spread further  than ever before, including into the Americas.

[55:14] allowing hardy groups to walk across the  difficult passage into a new continent.

[55:30] Humans managed to quickly descend down  the Americas to the southern tip in only a few thousand years travelling  fastest down the safer coastlines. They still had to traverse some  extreme landscapes: titantic jungles,  

[55:44] immense mountains, searing deserts and  breathtaking plateaus, whicle encountering a number of savage super-predators like  Short-face Bears and Saber Tooth Tigers. That must have really stretched their  adaptability and survival skills.

[56:00] The oldest pottery, which requires  controlled baking of specific clay, may be 20,000 years old  according to findings in China.

[56:20] leading to blonde hair appearing  in ancient North Eurasian people. The oldest human remains with  that hair are 17,000 years old.

[56:33] Not all cultural practices invented back  then were something we want to preserve. We have direct evidence that  our Homo Sapien ancestors practiced cannibalism at least 15,800 years ago.

[56:46] Though it's thought to be only a funerary  rite and not some sort of macabre food source.

[57:47] We arrive at the year zero of the Human Era. 12,000 years ago people in modern turkey  built Gobekli Tepe, a giant structure, with a level of collaboration  that heralded modern civilization.

[58:01] we joined forces and settled in larger groups  that shared learnings, beliefs and resources. Soon we had our first buildings and temples.

[58:17] enabling us to thrive practically  anywhere we could move a herd. We then secured a food source  by growing crops every year.

[58:31] to work the fields, clustering  around the most fertile lands. Dogs and cats joined us in this move. More food meant more people could live together.

[58:46] Extra hands helped each other, allowing  others to specialize in different crafts. From surviving, we began thriving.

[59:10] The most successful villages grew into cities,  connected by trade and protected by walls. Important technologies sprang from them, like  bronze, pottery and paper, at ever faster rates.

[59:35] Even water bent to our will, as we diverted  rivers and dug canals to serve our needs. The first civilizations in  history rose to control its flow. Writing down our languages as words  was another massive breakthrough.

[59:50] distance and coordinate their efforts to  build things we still marvel at today.

[1:00:10] store knowledge over centuries and build  up armies to seal the fate of nations.

[1:00:25] Whole civilizations arose from  ancient foundations, expanding then eroding but often leaving behind innovations  and magnificent works of art or philosophy. Later generations could build on  them to reach greater heights.

[1:00:45] Our modern world is just the culmination of  thousands of years of effort, of generation after generation building upon the works of  their ancestors to reach greater heights. Cultures all around the world sought to  improve their lives in their own way.

[1:01:11] Everything is moving and changing so fast today. How many people wandered the same earth  for thousands and thousands of years, We sit at the tip of a vast history, the human  history, accelerating into an unknown future.

[1:01:31] Hopefully it's just the start  of somehing even greater.

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