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Big History Project
Course: Big History Project > Unit 6
Lesson 1: How Our Ancestors Evolved | 6.0- ACTIVITY: Vocab Tracking
- WATCH: Unit 6 Overview
- ACTIVITY: Early Ancestors
- ACTIVITY: Threshold Card — Threshold 6 Collective Learning
- WATCH: Threshold 6 — Humans and Collective Learning
- WATCH: Human Evolution
- READ: Lucy and the Leakeys
- READ: Jane Goodall
- READ: Gallery — Human Ancestors
- Quiz: How Our Ancestors Evolved
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WATCH: Threshold 6 — Humans and Collective Learning
About 200,000 years ago, man evolved to become the most important force for change on the Earth's surface. What makes us so different from other living things? How did we, together, make something entirely new? Created by Big History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- how many years can we back track humans??(6 votes)
- I think about 2 million years(1 vote)
- At, can't other animals communicate like humans as well? Not in our language, but can they? 1:57(3 votes)
- but why did we get smarter and why are we the new age then we were earlier in ower lives like awere ansesters(3 votes)
- We are the "new" age, but only to our ancestors. Our brains evolved into something.... more...(3 votes)
- so we came from different animals(1 vote)
- what is the difference between our brain and our ansisters brain(0 votes)
Video transcript
NARRATOR: The first living
organisms appeared on Earth at least 3.5 billion
years ago. To us they would have seemed
tiny and insignificant, yet they were extraordinarily
complex compared to anything else
that had ever existed. Over the next 3.5 billion years
they would diversify and evolve. About 600 million years ago,
some started to combine. Over time, they formed
multicellular organisms like trees, mushrooms,
frogs, dinosaurs, or even the first small mammals,
which probably looked a bit like mice. When the dinosaurs
were wiped out by an asteroid, mammals prospered, evolving into a great range
of new species. One group lived
in trees and ate fruit. They had hands,
stereoscopic vision and unusually large brains. These were our
ancestors, the primates. Our own species, Homo sapiens,
evolved about 200,000 years ago. Now, we treat the
appearance of humans as a new threshold
because we would eventually create entirely new
forms of complexity. Today, we have become
the most important force for change on
the Earth's surface. We are the first species
in 3.5 billion years that has had such power. What makes us so different? For this threshold,
powerful brains are one ingredient, but it's not just
a matter of brains. Many other brainy
species exist. They include dolphins
and chimpanzees and crows. The other critical ingredient
was the development of symbolic language. This enabled humans
to share their ideas with each other
very efficiently. Human communities
grew and interacted, creating the perfect
conditions for something new, the ability
to learn collectively instead of just as individuals. Ideas and knowledge accumulated
generation after generation, and human technologies became
more and more powerful. As knowledge
accumulated over time, our control of resources
and the environment increased and accelerated,
leading humans towards two new thresholds
that would have a huge impact on our planet.