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Saturday, August 03, 2019

How Long Ago Did Humans Emerge? Putting Today Into Perspective.

Edited from a timeline in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari:



Years Before
The Present


3.8 billion

Emergence of organisms

6 million

Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees

2.5 million

Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa.  First stone tools

2 million

Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species

500,000

Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East

300,000

Daily usage of fire

70,000

Emergence of fictive language. Sapiens spread out of Africa

30,000

Extinction of Neanderthals

16,000

Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna

13,000

Extinction of Homo floresiensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species.

12,000


The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent
 settlements.





Let's put the US experiment in democracy in perspective.  Let's step back from 24 hour cable news that requires sensationalizing the unimportant to keep viewers watching.  Let's step back from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram which make what happened 10 seconds ago the most important event in history.  Until the next post five seconds later.  Sapiens destructive nature has sped up the destruction of the environment that we depend on, but not quite that much.

But let's also pay attention to the fact that where sapiens go, other species go extinct.  I've abbreviated the timeline from Sapiens.  I've left out the last 5000 years.

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