Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
We thank the following experts for their scientific input:
Dr. Manuel Will
Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen
Prof. Dr. Patrick Roberts
Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena
Prof. Dr. Marie Soressi
Professor of Hominin Diversity Archaeology, University of Leiden
The Earth is in the middle of one of its many Ice Ages. Glacial sheets are rampant and deserts expand. But sheltered from all this is East Africa, which remains temperate and comfortable.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01032-y
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28627786/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248412000395
It's not clear when our species arrived. 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.
https://kar.kent.ac.uk/62267/1/Submission_288356_1_art_file_2637492_j96j1b.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/546212a
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstreams/159808cb-3eed-4908-ba81-26b5490e7299/download
All humans descend directly through their mothers from a woman who lived at this time, based on DNA in our cells' mitochondria.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100817122405.htm
Humans were not alone. They lived side-by-side with multiple other hominins, some millions of years older than us. Cousins or ancestors? It's unclear.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-024-02390-z
We were already great hunters, wielding spears and fire, huddling under animal skins and living in communities that shared joy and death.
https://news.asu.edu/content/oldest-spear-points-date-500000-years
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319175121
https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aman.13914
Without maps or shoes, we regularly traveled long distances and even carried obsidian hundreds of kilometers to turn into cutting tools.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248416301956
Our natural desire to wander takes us all around the continent, from the Mediterranean coast down to the tip of South Africa.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.356.6342.993
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 Neanderthals and interbred, leaving genetic traces and a fossil record.
https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/the-first-migrations-out-of-africa
We think that in arid regions, humans would congregate around oases. By stringing together short trips between oases, our ancestors might have been able to occasionally cross impossible deserts.
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC2575439&blobtype=pdf
Hair lice are delicate parasites that evolved specifically to live under the protection of our hair. So when they split off into body lice, we get the earliest evidence that we started to wear clothes on our bodies.
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/when-did-humans-start-wearing-clothes
Human expansion was not some sort of linear journey. There was no general planning, and it was just as likely to go forwards as to retrace its steps. If we didn't have the means to go somewhere, then we'd never visit it even if it was right next to our birthplace. The island of Madagascar, separated from Africa by sea, remained untouched until 2000 years ago for this reason.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204368
Remains of burnt snail shells from 170,000 years ago suggest we caught giant gastropods and turned them into roasted snacks.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/homo-sapiens-supersized-snails
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.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716068115
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.
https://doc.rero.ch/record/15550/files/PAL_E2962.pdf
Walking down the beach looking for shellfish, our ancestors sometimes collected pretty shells. We know they had an eye for beauty, just like us.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234924
Our ancestors had a hunter-gatherer lifestyle that's difficult to imagine today. They only really had to work for about 20 hours per week, with the rest spent socializing, playing and perhaps painting. Sounds fun! Except you never knew when your next meal was coming, or if tomorrow's hunt would be your last.
https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/printpdf/952
https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/id/eprint/4653063/1/5654_2_merged_1553018462.pdf
Ancient rivers criss-crossing Africa likely served as roads 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.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0074834
There's also a lot we don't know. 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.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01738-w.pdf
Now we really lengthen our stride. 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.
Our expansion takes us across the Miditerranean sea, to the island of Crete. How did we get there 130,000 years ago? Did we swim or build rafts? We only find watercraft dated tens of thousands of years later, yet skeletal remains on the island means we must have found a way.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40835484
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, 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.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2020042118
We also find shells perforated so they can be strung together at this time, to serve as decorations or jewellery. Ancient bling!
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0234924
On the shore of an ancient lake in Saudi Arabia, 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, making it an ideal environment for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
The oldest abstract symbols are 120,000 year old bone markings. They're definitely calculated and intentional, but what do they mean?
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-prehistoric-bone-etchings-believed-oldest.html
So much is lost from back then. Homo Erectus, our longest living cousin, goes extinct around this time, and with them goes their culture and 1.7 million of years of history.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus
The global climate shifts once again, accelerating human expansion out of Africa from a trickle to a wave. And as ocean levels were so much lower, land bridges existed that led them along surprising paths between continents! 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.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19365
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-19601-w.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24779-1.pdf
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13323-015-0030-2.pdf
We believe the main path Homo Sapiens had to leave Africa was through the Arabian Peninsula, leading to modern day Turkey and Iran. Despite the challenge, they mastered the mountainous areas they encountered there.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19365
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi6838
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.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3tS2MULo5rYC&pg=PA163&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/burial/qafzeh-oldest-intentional-burial
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.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2021655118
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210510161448.htm
Meanwhile, we start to reveal our complex inner worlds by painting more than we see with our own eyes. Instead of simple representations of nature, we find the first symbolic paintings.
Complex behaviour required equally capable communication. We very likely had languages we could use to chat with other human groups. In fact, Neanderthals had this capability too, so might we have tried to chat each other up when we met?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01391-6#Sec1
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.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-021-01097-y
Our innate adaptability served us well. But quickly, we learnt to go further and change the environment to suit us instead. With the power of fire in our hands, we burnt down forests and cleared vegetation to make our own hunting or foraging easier.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-32673-7.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S003101822030599X?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248414001778?via%3Dihub
The oldest piece of string is 90,000 years old, and it belonged to Neanderthals. Could we have asked to trade for it?
Africa's northern regions remained green and pleasant for a very long time. This meant that more groups of humans could follow a sort of "Green Corridor" out of Africa, resulting in more encounters with Neanderthals and thus a lot more of their DNA in our genetic material.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba8940
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0518-2
As humans crossed into Asia, their territory expanded vertically too. Our ancestors climbed and shrugged off piercing winds to find themselves in caves 2000 to 3000 meters above sea level.
Our ancestors already knew that materials in their environment had properties that weren't visible or tangible. Our ancestors discovered medicinal plants, and added them for example to bedding for their insect-repelling effect.
https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC127310
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. The survivors were the ones who knew how to scavenge for food, find reliable shelter and were just lucky enough to live in less affected areas.
During harsh times, we relied on our technology 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.
We probably had to spend more times in caves when weather outside worsened. That gave us time to work on our stone engraving skills and abstract paintings.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1067575
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0514-3
Human rituals continued to grow stranger and more complex. We found a cave in Botswana where spearheads were gifted to a great python made of carved rock 70,000 years ago.
https://www.apollon.uio.no/english/articles/2006/python-english.html
Living side-by-side with other hominins for thousands of years meant there were many fruitful encounters. Interbreeding with Neanderthals in Europe happened so often that 1-4% of our modern genetic makeup comes from them.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3464203/
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.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41982-023-00164-w
Our growing creativity also had a practical side. We developed bows and arrows 61,000 years ago, helping make our hunting even more efficient.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440307002142
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 South East Asia, which were much smaller than today. This allowed Homo Sapiens to make their way into Indonesia, New Guinea and the Australian continent, each a new alien world to our ancestors.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aai9067
https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/53719/26/53719_Bird%20et%20al_2018_accepted%20author%20version.pdf
https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC6112744&blobtype=pdf
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.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi0189
Our travels put us into contact with more of our hominin cousins. Encounters with Denisovans in Asia led to interbreeding that has left its own specific genetic mark.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30247-0
Having groups of excellent hunters move into 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.
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. The evidence appears as a rapid expansion of stone age technology and complex behaviours that leave, for example, better cave art.
https://www.nagoya-u.ac.jp/researchinfo/result-en/2024/02/20240207-1.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44798-y
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.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1193130
Our hunting styles also became very varied and well adapted to the new environments we encountered. By 45,000 years ago, we became experts in hunting monkies and squirrels, then making tools out of their bones. We find them in large numbers inside caves in Sri Lanka.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08623-1
Homo Sapiens' arrival was so impactful that other species started adapting to them. Or, as the clever fox did, followed bands of humans and picked through their leftovers.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235692
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.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/lion-man-ice-age-masterpiece
http://www.loewenmensch.de/lion_man.html
The oldest musical instrument is the Hohle Fels Flute also discovered in a German cave. It’s from a vulture's wing bone with five holes, up to 40,000 years old, and it tells us what kind of music filled our nights.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08169
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.
https://journals.openedition.org/palethnologie/5135
Better tools means better tailoring. 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.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9832545/
https://hal.science/hal-04685486/document
As humans progress, Neanderthals decline until they disappear from the fossil record around 35,000 years ago. It wasn't sudden, but whatever happened caused them to go extinct in the same territories that humans occupied.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg9817
We found the earliest murder victim! A skull was found with a depressed fracture, suggesting someone was clubbed in the head 33,000 years ago.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216718
The Aurignacian peoples in Europe develops advanced technology like fine stone blades, and the oldest human sculptures called Venus figurines from clay 31,000 years ago.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003552118300797
It's harder to trace, but textile industries also continued to improve. One of the earliest evidence for linen and fabric making comes from flax fibers wound together 30,000 years ago.
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4270521/BarYosef_PrehistoricLinen.pdf?sequence=2
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 even before, including into the Americas. Today's Bering Strait was a Bering Bridge back then, allowing hardy groups to walk across the difficult passage into a new continent.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379118307716
Humanity's best friends are also very old friends. The first dogs were basically identical to wolves except for behaviour and diet when their domestication started.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440320300169?via%3Dihub
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.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X20300844?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379124005535?via%3Dihub
Cave bears go extinct around 24,000 years ago. That's one less super-predator to worry about! And more caves for our ancestors to take over.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2018.1448395
Long before actual farming starts, Neolithic peoples in the Middle East understood they could control what could grow on their lands. These hunter-gatherer societies practiced 'proto-farming' where they intentionally gathered plants they liked to eat like barley and helped them grow.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131422
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, 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.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/02/230206104123.htm
Human technology keeps making breakthroughs. The oldest pottery, which requires controlled baking of specific clay, may be 20,000 years old according to findings in China.
https://www.science.org/content/article/worlds-oldest-pottery
Our bodies adapt to new environments, leading to blonde hair appearing in ancient North Eurasian people. The oldest human remains with that hair are 17,000 years old.
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. Though it's thought to be only a funerary rite and not some sort of macabre food source.