00:00There's an amazing place in Ethiopia, East Africa, called Hadar.
00:04This place is a treasure trove.
00:06We found tons of old animal fossils there.
00:09And among those remnants, we discovered something very special.
00:13The fossils of a creature called Australopithecus afarensis.
00:17One of these guys was found almost complete.
00:20You might know it today by the name Lucy, after a famous song by the Beatles.
00:25Lucy was a small lady, only about as tall as a kitchen counter.
00:28She lived 3.2 million years ago and became a huge celebrity when we found her in 1974.
00:36She helped us learn more about our early ancestors, creatures called Australopithecines.
00:42Around 10 to 12 million years ago, there was a group of animals that broke into two branches.
00:48One of the branches led to modern apes, while the other led to humans.
00:52This separation happened because one group decided to stay in trees
00:56and became what we now call gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans.
01:00They moved around using all four limbs and lived in forests.
01:04But the other group decided to live on the ground and try walking on two legs.
01:08Because of that, their brains started getting bigger over time.
01:12And over millions of years, they became bald monkeys who watch videos on YouTube.
01:17Yeah, you know who you are.
01:18Lucy, like other Australopiths, was a bit different from us.
01:22She still looked like an ape and lived during a transitional stage.
01:26She could walk on two legs, but didn't do it all the time.
01:30Sometimes she climbed trees, just like a monkey.
01:33She and her buddies were the first step in human evolution.
01:36Then came a new branch of evolution, Homo habilis, or handyman.
01:43They were the first members of the Homo genus because they were the ones to start developing stone tools
01:48and first show human creativity.
01:51They probably used these tools for scavenging and processing food.
01:55We found the first clues about them back in the 1960s.
01:58They walked around East Africa about 3 million years ago.
02:01They were pretty small, about 4 feet 7 inches tall.
02:06They didn't climb trees anymore and mostly walked on the ground.
02:09Their skull shape already resembled ours, unlike the more pear-shaped heads of Australopiths.
02:15That's because they had larger brains.
02:18After them, we had Homo erectus, the upright man.
02:23They lived about 2 million to 70,000 years ago.
02:26The name hints that this was the first hominin species that walked on two legs almost all the time.
02:32They were also the first to migrate out of Africa, spreading to Asia and Europe.
02:37And here, we had the real breakthrough.
02:40Representatives of Homo erectus had even larger brains and learned to make more creative and advanced tools.
02:47They created the first choppers, cleavers, and hammers, and used flakes as scrapers and knives.
02:53They probably used a lot of things—wood, bark, and even grass—to make the first strings and ropes.
02:58With all that, they learned how to hunt large animals, and probably hunted together a lot.
03:04They were also the first ones to start using fire, which changed our history forever.
03:10Over time, more Homo species emerged, including the famous Neanderthals.
03:15They're known for their European roots.
03:17They split from our common ancestor around 400,000 years ago.
03:21Now, even though we share one common ancestor, we didn't evolve from Neanderthals.
03:27They were a separate branch.
03:28All Neanderthals went extinct.
03:30But our evolutionary branch coexisted with them a long time ago.
03:35Neanderthals were resourceful, hunting both land and sea creatures.
03:39They left behind thousands of stone tools and even decorated caves with paintings.
03:45They had their own ceremonies, too.
03:47They started to bury those who passed away.
03:49They probably noticed that leaving them in the wild leads to spreading diseases and attracting scavengers.
03:55But they also showed care and love in their burial rituals.
04:02Then, it was time for archaic Homo sapiens.
04:05They lived around 500,000 to 200,000 years ago, emerging in Africa and Europe.
04:11This was the last leg between our ancestors and our modern species, Homo sapiens.
04:16The brain just kept getting bigger.
04:19They started to show more complex behaviors, not only burial and interesting stone tools, but also smart hunting strategies and planning for the future.
04:28They probably had a diverse diet that included both hunting and gathering.
04:32And finally, we reached the anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
04:39They emerged around 200,000 years ago in Africa.
04:42They had a similar skeletal structure and brain size to modern humans.
04:47And their behavior was pretty close to ours.
04:50They had complex social structures, started thinking in symbols, and so on.
04:54They migrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, spreading across the globe and eventually replacing other homonym species, such as Neanderthals.
05:04They started to create their first languages and form their first words.
05:08The first words were probably very simple, like ah, to call someone, and ma, for babies.
05:14After evolving into our final stage, we started advancing in our cultural and technological development.
05:22This development became very rapid over the last 200,000 years.
05:26About 12,000 years ago, the Neolithic period, also known as the New Stone Age, began.
05:33It marked the end of the Glacial period.
05:36Humans started living in settled villages, instead of constantly moving around.
05:40This change was brought about by the advent of agriculture, which allowed people to grow crops and raise animals, like goats and sheep.
05:48Early humans started to domesticate animals, such as sheepdogs, for herding.
05:52We also started making the first art, leaving famous drawings in caves, handprints, animals, mostly cows, hunting, and many others.
06:02We even created the first currency.
06:05We began using clay tokens for transactions.
06:08This marked the beginning of commerce and the use of money.
06:12And finally, we started writing.
06:14And now the events could be recorded and passed down through written records.
06:18This is when history officially began.
06:20From that point on, we saw the development of agriculture, the rise of complex societies, the invention of writing and the wheel, and the emergence of civilizations.
06:31Our tools became more and more sophisticated.
06:34Languages appeared, leading to the diverse cultures and societies seen today.
06:39So, why have we stopped evolving?
06:41The truth is, we haven't.
06:43Human evolution is an ongoing process, although it's not as dramatic as it used to be.
06:49We adapt to different environments, have different skin tones, appearances, body sizes, and genetic mutations that influence traits like lactose intolerance or resistance to certain diseases.
07:02But the world we live in today is very different from the one our ancestors inhabited.
07:07We don't suffer as much because we've developed technology, culture, and social systems.
07:12Thanks to this, evolution slowed down, seeing that we're doing okay as we are now.
07:18What we started experiencing is cultural evolution rather than a physical one.
07:23Plus, 200,000 years is a pretty short time period, considering the time span of the universe or even of our Earth.
07:30We should see what happens to us in hundreds of thousands of years.
07:34I won't be around then.
07:35But there are some theories about that.
07:40There's a big idea that, in the future, humans and machines might merge into one super-being.
07:46We call it technological singularity, a state where we, humans, lead our technologies to the point where we won't be able to control their development anymore.
07:55For example, if AI gets so advanced, it will change everything about how we live.
08:01Despite the current rise of AI, we shouldn't be too worried about it taking over the world, at least not in the next few decades.
08:09All we've developed now is weak artificial intelligence, little simulations.
08:14They might look scary to those who don't know much about AI, but the truth is, they have yet far to go before they reach the grand complexity of the human brain, not to mention consciousness.
08:25However, many people believe it's only a matter of time before AI reaches this level of intelligence, and then our world might change forever.
08:34There are other possibilities, too.
08:37For example, one day, we might reach a level where we merge with machines and learn to upload our consciousness in the cloud.
08:44In that case, we might become a hive mind, taking over the Internet using our brains, becoming one giant consciousness.
08:51No matter what happens in the future, one thing's certain, technology is changing fast, and it's going to affect all of us sooner or later.
Comments