7-6 million years ago: Possible divergence of the lineage leading to humans from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and bonobos (our closest living relatives).
Ardipithecus kadabba (~5.8-5.2 million years ago)
Ardipithecus ramidus (~4.4 million years ago)
Australopithecus anamensis (~4.2-3.9 million years ago)
Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) (~3.9-2.9 million years ago)
Kenyanthropus platyops (~3.5 million years ago)
Australopithecus africanus (~3.3-2.1 million years ago)
Paranthropus aethiopicus (~2.7-2.3 million years ago)
Australopithecus garhi (~2.5 million years ago)
Paranthropus robustus (~2-1.2 million years ago)
Homo habilis (~2.1-1.5 million years ago)
Homo rudolfensis (~1.9 million years ago)
Homo ergaster/Homo erectus (~1.9 million years ago - ~143,000 years ago)
Paranthropus boisei (~1.7-1.1 million years ago)
Homo heidelbergensis (~700,000-300,000 years ago)
Homo naledi (~335,000-236,000 years ago)
Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) (~400,000-40,000 years ago)
Denisovans (around 300,000-50,000 years ago)
Homo sapiens (modern humans) (~300,000 years ago to present) Oldowan industry - simple flaked stone tools (~2.9-1.7 million years ago)
Acheulean industry - advanced tools like hand axes (~1.7 million - ~160,000 years ago)
Archaic humans in Southeast Asian islands like Indonesia (~1.8-1 million years ago, dating is a bit uncertain on this one)
First control of fire (~1 million - ~700,000 years ago)
First archaic humans living in colder climates like Atapuerca, Spain (~800,000 years ago)
First wooden spears denoting a change in hunting tech (~400,000 years ago)
Widespread control of fire (~400,000 years ago)
==> First homo sapiens <== (~300,000 years ago)
First neanderthals arrive in Europe (~230,000-150,000 years ago)
First use of ochre pigment for symbolic purposes (~190,000 years ago)
Body lice genetically diverge from head lice due to clothing (~170,000 years ago)
Mousterian industry - points, scrapers, denticulates, notches, and awls (~300,000-40,000 years ago)
First time eating seafood at Pinnacle Point (~150,000 years ago)
Humans start collecting and using shell beads (~130,000 years ago)
First heat treated material - silcrete (~110,000 years ago)
First compound adhesive leads to tar-hafted tools (~100,000 years ago)
First bed (~77,000 years ago)
First bow and arrow in Sibudu (~72,000–60,000 years ago)
Arrival in Australia (and thus first boat?) (~70,000-65,000 years ago)
First musical instrument (flute) (~60,000 years ago)
First burial ritual at Shanidar Cave (~60,000 years ago but controversial)
First sewing needle (~45,000 years ago)
Aurignacian industry - true homo sapien tools like microlithics, blades, projectile points, pressure flaking, split-base bone points (~43,000-26,000 years ago)
Gravettian industry - Bow and arrow, harpoons, and darts come into their own (~33,000-22,000 years ago)
Solutrean & Magdalenian industry - flint tools, cave art, etc. (~22,000-12,000 years ago)
This list is so incomplete it's not even funny :)
It has been said that if a modern "average" human were transported back in time, it would be difficult for that person to build anything useful, because of the lack of material manufacturing (c.f. "Toaster from Scratch" and "Primitive Technology" channels) and lack of specific knowledge.
So goes my thought experiment. If I were transported 100,000 years back, I would big-scale industrialize the production of soap blocks and then build soap distribution networks over wast lands (the King of Soap). Soap is quite easy to produce with wood ash.
I would also mass-scale press-print porno comics (using wooden plate carvings).
I think these two what defines civilization and will give me a chance for not being killed as a practitioner of witchcraft.
>In addition, a timeline of culture & technology:
A lot can be accomplished in a few million years that can just not be done in a few hundred thousand.
Something very evocative is the resemblance to Neanderthal cave engravings (@16:45 in the video) - that same theme of cross hatching, with multiple length verticals. As Lee points out, ascribing meaning to these things is going to be pretty much impossible, but it's very evocative. Could it be a family portrait? A warning? The 300k BC version of a Biohazard sigil? A Homo Sapiens band, hunting them into the depths of the earth? Who knows.
(IE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warnin... version of your 300K BC biohazard sigil)
Obviously this is pure imagination but I wonder if that was why they felt the need to scratch the rock or create lines to block it from spreading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_naledi
Edit: this was a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36345824 and dang moved it (??)
There is no evidence of *homo sapiens* use or presence beyond the light zone of the cavern system
Cultural context: there are *homo nadeli* graves in the cave system with the drawings
Access to the cavern system has not changed and would have been much easier for the smaller *homo nadeli* (Lee Berger had to lose 55 pounds to fit into the caves)
The burials and drawings were made over a long period of time, implying an ongoing settlement
The evidence for *homo nadeli* burials meets or exceeds that accepted for ancient *homo sapiens* burials
Sperm whales don't have much of a chance to manipulate their environment, but they have the largest brains on earth [2].
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-m....
[2] https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/extreme-mammals/extreme-bod....
A lot of society norms are based on our intelligence levels being remarkably approximately equal across all of our species. What if there existed a bunch of beings on Earth that were somewhere in-between a human and a monkey in intelligence, cognitive, and language abilities?
Would they go to school and be a part of the economy and job market, but with some kind of "no hominid left behind" program? Or would they be pets and get free food and rent in return for being cute? Or would they have their own hamlets and kingdoms and fight with our high-tech cities and countries?
Extermination is likely because humans generally don't like competition. Just look at all the other apex predators/megafauna that have disappeared (or practically so) when humans showed up.
Otherwise, humanity's extensive history of slavery of anything we can de-humanize would apply to any survivors.
Wouldn't it be nice if Neanderthal, Erectus, Denisovan and Naledi was with us today but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"?
My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above. But holy crap do they have better physical / situational awareness; their minds are incredibly sharper than mine for what's happening in terms of motion, sound, smell, etc. and they surely get as much or more pleasure/stimulation out of running through my field after a rabbit or frisbee than I do writing Rust or making comments on hackernews...
I was talking to my son in the car last night about this -- in and around the whole world of "races" (elves, dwarves, etc.) in Tolkien-esque fantasy novels, D&D, Dwarf Fortress, etc. In a way this is almost like a fantastical projection of a world where other Hominin species co-exist.
Our yearning for fantastical elves to live along side us might actually be a feeling of loneliness knowing that we are the only species of our kind left.
> My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above
I very much agree with intelligence being multidimensional and that humans are largely similar in general intelligence level, just that everyone has different intelligences.
I'm not sure that's true of a different species though. Intelligence is the evolved trait of homo sapiens. I wouldn't call a baboon, rattlesnake, or jellyfish "intelligent but in a different way". Those creatures have other evolutionary reasons for success, but not intelligence.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/age-of-near-e...
When we think of the other branches of the Human family tree, we often think of them as sort of diverging from our ancestors and then freezing unchanged. However, it would not at all be surprising if the pressures which so aggressively favored increased intelligence in our ancestors also applied to all our "cousins".
The thing is that normally the change happens in the speciesation first and then these traits are used for something distinctive - dinosaurs grew feathers first, and then used them for flight. Humans grew intelligence first, and then used it for civilization. The resource has to be already there to be used. The resource will not be developed by evolution. The lungfish already had limbs and joints (while living purely aquatically), thus it could use it to walk outside the water.
It seemed in the past, intelligence was more of a gentle curve. Now, you have Homo sapiens sapiens with planes, rockets, global communications, rockets, satellites, and then every other species. The most sophisticated modern non-human primate doesn’t seem to rise to the level of intelligence and sophistication ago even early hominids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ape#Changes_in_taxonomy_and_te...
You will often see mention of Hominin (Homo and Pan (chimpanzees), I think) as well, where you would have once heard Hominid.
Knapping [2] - which has been around for over 3 million years at this point - is much more predictable and efficient than grinding while requiring less intuitive knowledge of the materials. Paleolithic people just didn't have the resources to experiment with enough materials to figure out hardness, grain size, etc. for proper grinding.
Maybe they had more boring classes than we do today though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not aware of anyone teaching rodents to learn from maps, but I'd bet they could.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeolog...
“Homo sapiens” are hybrid combinations of different species that have long disappeared. “Non human hominids” are frequently groups that mixed with Homo sapiens. Large variances in human populations come from different hybrid compositions
It's not news that non- homo sapien sapiens had things like art, music, an mortuary practices.