What Happened Before History? Human Origins

The world we live in seems normal, ordinary, people seem to exist like this and have always existed.

But it's not that. Never before have we humans lived in a world so refined and adapted to our needs as we are today. It gives us the luxury of forgetting ourselves and not worrying about our survival.

Food, shelter, security—all are more or less obvious. But we are extraordinary; In over 99.99% of human history, life has been very different. And there isn't just one human story.

Our story begins 6 million years ago when the hominid tribe split and our relationship with the apes ended.

Homogeneous people appeared 2.8 million years ago – the first humans. We like to think that we are the only people, but that is far from the truth. When we first saw Homo sapiens sapiens 200,000 years ago, there were at least six other species of humans. cousins ​​of comparable intelligence and abilities, which must have been incredibly scary, a bit like living with aliens.

Some of these have been very successful. For example, in Homo erectus survived two million years. Ten times longer than modern man has existed. The last of the remaining humans disappeared about 10,000 years ago.

We do not know what caused their extinction.

Modern humans share at least a small percentage of the DNA of Neanderthals and other humans, so there has been some confusion, but certainly not enough to induce fusion between species. So we don't know if our cousins ​​left the country because they lost the battle for resources or because of a series of minor genocides.

Somehow it's just us. Return to the beginning of humanity. 28 million years ago, early humans used tools, but for almost 2 million years they didn't make much progress. Until they learn to control fire.

Fire meant cooking, which made food more nutritious, which helped develop our brains. It also produced light and heat, lengthening the days and sweetening the winters. In addition, it not only deters predators, but can also be used for hunting. The burnt wood or meadows produced small animals, nuts and tubers, which were pre-roasted.

For 300,000 years most different human species lived in small hunter-gatherer societies. They had tools of fire, wood and stone, they planned the future, they buried their dead and they had their own cultures. But most of all they talked to each other. Probably in a less complex protolanguage than ours.

If we had a time machine, how far back could we go, steal babies and raise them today without anyone realizing they're a little different?

There are many discussions. Anatomically modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago, but probably 70,000 years is the longest we can go back in time to hijack another modern human.

Earlier newborns likely lacked several key mutations in the gene needed to build a brain with modern language and abstract thinking abilities.

About 50,000 years ago there was an explosion of innovation. Tools and weapons became more sophisticated and cultures more complex because people now had multitasking brains and a more advanced language to communicate information effectively with each other down to the last detail. This has allowed for much closer cooperation, and that is what distinguishes us from other living beings on Earth. Not our relatively weak bodies and inferior senses, but the ability to flexibly work together in large groups, unlike, say, rigid beehives or intimate but tiny wolf packs.

As our brains evolved, we became capable of things that life had not been able to do before.

One - Expand your knowledge quickly.

Two - to preserve the knowledge acquired over generations.

Three: Use prior knowledge for even deeper understanding.

It sounds silly, but until then information had to be passed from generation to generation, mostly through genetics, which is not efficient.

But for the next 40,000 years, human life remained largely the same. Some have even walked on our moon .We have placed robots on other planets We have looked into the universe's past with mechanical eyes Our knowledge and how to extract and store more of it has exploded

Today a student knows more about the one Scientist's universe was formed centuries ago Humans rule the world on this planet, even though our governments are very fragile

We are still not very different from our ancestors 70,000 years ago But their way of life has existed for centuries with less than 0.001% history of Humanity ,From now on we don't know what the future will bring.

We're building scratch heaven but we don't know if it's on a solid foundation.

Remember how special this imaginary human world is, those little things. There was nothing to build upon.