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About this unit

Humans are unusual. We walk upright and build cities. We travel from continent to continent in hours. We communicate across the globe in an instant. We alone can build bombs and invent medicines. Why can we do all these things that other creatures can’t? What makes us so different from other species? Investigating how early humans evolved and lived helps us answer these questions. Most people give our big brains all the credit, but that’s only part of the story. To more fully understand our success as a species, we need to look closely at our ancestors and the world they lived in. You’ll learn how foraging humans prospered and formed communities, and you’ll uncover the uniquely human ability to preserve, share, and build upon each other’s ideas to learn collectively.