Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell 

Sources – Vision For Humanity

- At the same time life is incredibly hard – more than 15 thousand children died yesterday, 700 million people live in extreme poverty, even within rich societies there is loads of unfairness and daily struggle.

Child mortality can be broken down by age, for example. Every day, 6,300 (year 2022) babies die within the first month. If we look at children up to the age of 5, the figure is 13,400 (year 2022).

UNICEF (2024): Neonatal mortality

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/neonatal-mortality/ 

Quote: “The first 28 days of life – the neonatal period – is the most vulnerable time for a child’s survival. Children face the highest risk of dying in their first month of life at an average global rate of 17 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022, down by 53 per cent from 37 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990. In comparison, the probability of dying after the first month and before reaching age 1 was estimated at 11 deaths per 1,000 and the probability of dying after reaching age 1 and before reaching age 5 was estimated at 9 deaths per 1,000 in 2022. Globally, 2.3 million children died in the first month of life in 2022 – approximately 6,300 neonatal deaths every day.”

UNICEF (2024): Under-five mortality

https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-survival/under-five-mortality/#:~:text=The%20under%2Dfive%20mortality%20rate,dying%20every%20day%20in%202022. 

Quote: “The under-five mortality rate refers to the probability a newborn would die before reaching exactly 5 years of age, expressed per 1,000 live births. In 2022, 4.9 million children under 5 years of age died. This translates to 13,400 children under the age of 5 dying every day in 2022. Globally, infectious diseases, including pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria, remain a leading cause of under-five deaths, along with preterm birth and intrapartum-related complications.”

With regard to poverty, we refer to the so-called "international poverty line", which is 2.15 dollars per day. 

#UN (2024): SDG indicator metadata

https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-01-01-01a.pdf

Quote: “Definition: The indicator “proportion of the population below the international poverty line” is defined as the percentage of the population living on less than $2.15 a day at 2017 international prices.”

The slider on the right-hand side ("poverty line") can be used to display various figures. 

For a month of 30 days, 1,000 dollars a month is 33 dollars a day. In the interactive graphic from the World Bank, you can only enter 30 dollars per day and then 35 dollars per day (6.64 and 6.83 respectively), but this gives you an idea of the order of magnitude. 

#Worldbank (2024): Poverty and Inequality Platform

https://pip.worldbank.org/home 

- This is where the human story begins, about six million years ago, with the hominins. 

Around 8 to 6 million years ago, we had the last common ancestor with the chimpanzees and bonobos. Then the lineages split, including a human lineage, the tribe Hominini. 

One of the oldest hominin could be Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad. However, scientists are in strong dispute as to whether these fossils can be counted among the first representatives of the hominins that there is only a broad range of several million years in general regarding this question. 

#Pontzer, H. (2012): Overview of Hominin Evolution. Nature Education Knowledge, 3(10):8

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/overview-of-hominin-evolution-89010983/#:~:text=The%20oldest%20hominins%20currently%20known,and%20some%20other%20fragmentary%20remains.

Quote: “The oldest hominins currently known are Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad (Brunet et al. 2005) and Overview of Hominin Evolution | Learn Science at ScitableOrrorin tugenensis from Kenya (Senut et al. 2001). Sahelanthropus, dated to between 6 and 7 mya, is known from a largely complete skull and some other fragmentary remains."

#Macchiarelli, R. et al. (2020): Nature and relationships of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 149

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047248420301597?via%3Dihub 

Quote: “The lack of clear evidence that the TM 266 femur is from a hominid that was habitually bipedal further weakens the already weak case (Mongle et al., 2019) for S. tchadensis being a stem hominin. However, this in no way diminishes the significance of S. tchadensis (Brunet et al., 2002).”

#Almécija, S. (2016): Pitfalls reconstructing the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. PNAS, Vol. 113 (8)

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1524165113 

Quote: “Available evidence suggests that both lineages share a LCA that lived in Africa ∼8–6 Myr.”

#Harcourt-Smith, W. (2010): The First Hominins and the Origins of Bipedalism

Evolution: Education and Outreach, Vol. 3

https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-010-0257-6#citeas 

Quote: “Molecular and paleontological evidence now point to the last common ancestor between chimpanzees and modern humans living between five and seven million years ago. Any species considered to be more closely related to humans than chimpanzees we call hominins. Traditionally, early hominins have been conspicuous by their absence in the fossil record, but discoveries in the last 20 years have finally provided us with a number of very important finds. We currently have three described genera, Ardipithecus, Orrorin and Sahelanthropus, of which Ardipithecus is extremely well represented by cranial, dental, and postcranial remains. All three genera are argued to be hominins based on reduced canine size and an increased capacity for bipedal locomotion. The evolutionary relationships between these taxa and both earlier hominoids and later hominins are somewhat disputed, but this is to be expected for any species thought to be close to the root of the hominin lineage.”

#Almécija, S. et al. (2021): Fossil apes and human evolution. Science, Vol. 372 (6542)

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abb4363 

Quote: “Ever since the writings of Darwin and Huxley, humans’ place in nature relative to apes (nonhuman hominoids) and the geographic origins of the human lineage (hominins) have been heavily debated. Humans diverged from apes [specifically, the chimpanzee lineage (Pan)] at some point between ~9.3 million and ~6.5 million years ago (Ma), and habitual bipedalism evolved early in hominins (accompanied by enhanced manipulation and, later on, cognition).”

#MPG (2024): What about bipedalism in Sahelanthropus?

https://www.mpg.de/22183908/what-about-bipedalism-in-sahelanthropus 

Quote: “The seven million year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis was discovered in 2001 in Chad and announced in 2002 as a habitual bipedal hominin species based on an adult distorted cranium. Thus, any additional information from postcranial elements is essential to clarify its nature and taxonomic status.”

- And then, at some point 200,000 years or about 10,000 generations ago they became us. Humanity had arrived. 

Here we give only a rounded order of magnitude. The research varies approximately between 200,000 (regarding fossils named “Omo I”) and 300,000 years (hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud). Quite current research assumes about 233,000 years (with deviations upward and downward of approx. 22,000 years). At the same time there are other results which assume about 315,000 years. 

#Vidal, C. M. et al. (2022): Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Nature

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04275-8#citeas 

Quote: “Here we report geochemical analyses that link the Kamoya’s Hominid Site (KHS) Tuff, which conclusively overlies the member of the Omo-Kibish Formation that contains Omo I, with a major explosive eruption of Shala volcano in the Main Ethiopian Rift. By dating the proximal deposits of this eruption, we obtain a new minimum age for the Omo fossils of 233 ± 22 kyr.”

#Richter, D. et al. (2017): The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age. Nature 546 

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22335 

Quote: “Here we report the ages, determined by thermoluminescence dating, of fire-heated flint artefacts obtained from new excavations at the Middle Stone Age site of Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, which are directly associated with newly discovered remains of H. sapiens. A weighted average age places these Middle Stone Age artefacts and fossils at 315 ± 34 thousand years ago.”

#AAAS (2022): University of Cambridge press release - Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/939551? 

Quote: “‘Unlike other Middle Pleistocene fossils which are thought to belong to the early stages of the Homo sapiens lineage, Omo I possesses unequivocal modern human characteristics, such as a tall and globular cranial vault and a chin,’ said co-author Dr Aurélien Mounier from the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. ‘The new date estimate, de facto, makes it the oldest unchallenged Homo sapiens in Africa.’”