All Of Human History In One Hour

The modern human is at least 200,000 years old - 10,000 generations of knowledge and memories. Ancient Egypt seems pretty recent in this view. The last millennium, just a tiny speck, and your whole life is basically invisible in comparison.

So, here's 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 animals, tell stories around campfires, and slowly spread around the globe. Experience all of Human History in one hour. You can have this in the background, study with it, or just enjoy the ride. From time to time, I'll say a few words.

But before we start, something very important to us: Cuts to foreign aid this year have raised real concerns about people's well-being in some of the world's poorest communities. It can be hard to know what's actually happening — or how to help. GiveWell doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But its team of independent, nonprofit researchers are analyzing the impact of foreign aid funding 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!

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. It's not clear when our species arrived. The earliest skeletal remains suggest the first Homo Sapiens stepped foot into the world at least 200,000 years ago, perhaps even 300,000 years ago. All humans descend directly through their mothers from a woman who lived at this time, based on DNA in our cells' mitochondria. We were already great hunters, wielding spears and fire, huddling under animal skins, and living in communities that shared joy and death. Without maps or shoes, we regularly traveled long distances and even carried obsidian hundreds of kilometers to turn into cutting tools.

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

Before we continue our journey towards North Africa, we want to say thank you! Because of your support, we can make crazy videos like this one. A special thank you to all the birbs who got our 12,026 Human Era Calendar. We created the first one a decade ago to reframe time itself. By adding 10,000 years, we wanted to include all of human history. This year’s edition is better than ever: 12 vibrant Kurzgesagt illustrations tell the story of humanity’s special connection with the stars. It’s a year’s worth of art for your home, with plenty of space to plan your days or record your adventures in 12,026. Get the calendar along with some of our other science-y products designed with love. We’ve prepared some special deals for you – and after selling out in just one day, our first ever Artbook is back for pre-order. It features 10 years of calendar artwork and unseen behind-the-scenes facts and stories. Thank you so much for supporting real, human-made art!

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. 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. 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.

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. 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 2,000 years ago for this reason.

One of our greatest strengths is our adaptability. Where other species would perish or retreat when the climate changed, we would instead find new ways of living. Like when we moved into the African coasts to escape the worst of this Ice Age and had to rediscover everything about how to hunt or find shelter. 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. Walking down the beach looking for shellfish, our ancestors sometimes collected pretty shells. We know they had an eye for beauty, just like us. Remains of burnt snail shells from 170,000 years ago suggest we caught giant gastropods and turned them into roasted snacks. One ancestor's trash is a paleoarcheologist's treasure. 164,000-year-old leftovers containing shellfish reveal that humans learned to exploit marine resources back then.

The hominins likely descended from tree-dwelling apes, and we still found trees quite neat millions of years later. Forests housed plenty of food and could hide us from predators, so we kept returning to them whenever we could. Despite all of our tricks, sharp sticks, and hiding spots, our species remained a target for fearsome predators. Bears, hyenas, and lions larger than anything we see today challenged our status as top hunters. 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, you had to eat it on the spot or lose it. Thankfully, we could reach the roughly 3,000 calories needed per day. 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.

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. 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.

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 Mediterranean 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 mean we must have found a way.

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. We also find shells perforated so they can be strung together at this time, to serve as decorations or jewelry. Ancient bling!

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? 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 years of history.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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 behavior 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? 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.

The oldest piece of string is 90,000 years old, and it belonged to Neanderthals. Could we have asked to trade for it? Our innate adaptability served us well. But quickly, we learned to go further and change the environment to suit us instead. With the power of fire in our hands, we burned down forests and cleared vegetation to make our own hunting or foraging easier. 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.

As humans crossed into Asia, their territory expanded vertically too. Our ancestors climbed and shrugged off piercing winds to find themselves in caves 2,000 to 3,000 meters above sea level. 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. Our ancestors already knew that materials in their environment had properties that weren't visible or tangible. They discovered medicinal plants, and added them, for example, to bedding for their insect-repelling effect.

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. 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.

For generations, humans climbed mountains and crossed wide open plains while traveling 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. Prey was much harder to find and track, the fruits were unfamiliar, and predators could pounce from every bush or drop down from above. Yet, we thrived in there. 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.

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

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

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. 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.

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 behaviors that leave, for example, better cave art. 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 monkeys and squirrels, then making tools out of their bones. We find them in large numbers inside caves in Sri Lanka.

Humans have always loved caves. 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, whether it's climate or predators. Cover the entrance, get a fire going, and you've got a ready-made home for your family.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

Humanity's best friends are also very old friends. The first dogs were basically identical to wolves except for behavior and diet when their domestication started. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. Today's Bering Strait was a Bering Bridge back then, allowing hardy groups to walk across the difficult passage into a new continent. Humans managed to quickly descend down the Americas to the southern tip in only a few thousand years, traveling fastest down the safer coastlines. They still had to traverse some extreme landscapes: titanic jungles, immense mountains, searing deserts, and breathtaking plateaus, while 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.

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. 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.

We arrive at the year zero of the Human Era. 12,000 years ago, people in modern Turkey built Göbekli Tepe, a giant structure, with a level of collaboration that heralded modern civilization. Instead of wandering the world as isolated bands, we joined forces and settled in larger groups that shared learnings, beliefs, and resources. Soon we had our first buildings and temples. Taming animals was our next major innovation, enabling us to thrive practically anywhere we could move a herd. We then secured a food source by growing crops every year. Many humans abandoned their hunter-gatherer lifestyle 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. Extra hands helped each other, allowing others to specialize in different crafts. From surviving, we began thriving. 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. 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. It allowed humans to communicate across any distance and coordinate their efforts to build things we still marvel at today. Writing let us lay down the law in stone, store knowledge over centuries, and build up armies to seal the fate of nations. 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.

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. Everything is moving and changing so fast today. Let's not forget how we got here. How many people wandered the same earth for thousands and thousands of years, with the same hopes and ambition. We sit at the tip of a vast history, the human history, accelerating into an unknown future. Hopefully, it's just the start of something even greater.

This time of year is the perfect moment to remember that you personally can help advance this goal, for example by making a donation to a highly cost-effective organization. GiveWell has spent 18 years researching global health and development and only directs funding to the highest-impact opportunities they’ve found. Over 150,000 donors have already trusted GiveWell to direct more than two and a half billion dollars. Rigorous evidence suggests that these donations will save over 300,000 lives and improve the lives of millions more. You can find all of their research and recommendations on their site for free. And, thanks to the donors who chose to sponsor their research, GiveWell doesn’t take a cut from your tax-deductible donations to their recommended funds. If this is your first time using GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org. And when you donate, select YouTube and enter kurzgesagt on the donation form. Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell from kurzgesagt to get your donation matched.