What Happened Every 10,000 Years of Human Evolution

What if all of human history were a video game? Every time he survives, 10,000 years pass and he levels up, from the first members of our species 300,000 years ago all the way to you. Every level is a real archaeological discovery. In this animated journey through human evolution and prehistory, we level up through the oldest Homo sapiens fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, long-distance trade and red pigment in Kenya, 200,000-year-old grass beds and the first cooked starchy roots at Border Cave, early shellfish at Pinnacle Point, the oldest shell beads in Morocco, the green Sahara and human footprints in Saudi Arabia, the 100,000-year-old paint workshop at Blombos Cave, bone harpoons in Congo, the oldest known human burial in Africa, the Toba super-eruption and the oldest arrows, the journey out of Africa, meeting the Neanderthals, rafts to Australia, the oldest cave art story, Ice Age bone flutes, sewn clothing, the first pottery, the White Sands footprints in the Americas, and the start of farming, which made humans shorter. Then comes the last level. ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 Level 1: the first humans, 300,000 years ago 1:35 Level 10: the first attempt to leave Africa 3:26 Level 17: the ice age, a green Sahara and the first paint 5:04 Level 23: the first burial, a super-volcano and the first sailors 6:48 Level 27: Neanderthals, the first music and the coldest ice age 8:35 Level 30: why farming made humans shorter, and level 31: you 📚 Sources Hublin, J.-J., et al. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens. Nature, 546, 289–292. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22336 Kappelman, J., et al. (2024). Adaptive foraging behaviours in the Horn of Africa during Toba supereruption. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07208-3 📚 Further reading Brooks et al. 2018 (Science) · Wadley et al. 2020 (Science) · Henshilwood et al. 2011 (Science) · Martinón-Torres et al. 2021 (Nature) · Oktaviana et al. 2024 (Nature) · Hajdinjak et al