How did humanity create a great civilization?

"Origins" by Bahram Mobascher

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In the previous section, we introduced the origin of life on Earth. In this section, we'll look at how humans have evolved from the rest of the world to become the most intelligent creatures in the world.

The rise of mammals

With the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals soon took to the stage as the new rulers of the planet. In fact, the history of mammals is not shorter than that of dinosaurs, mammals were born long before dinosaurs ruled the earth. Early mammals were the size of mice, and they lived mostly underground, hiding their tracks through the bushes and preying on insects. The most striking feature of mammals is that they do not lay eggs, but rather give birth to their young directly and feed them with milk, which is the meaning of the word "lactation".

About 100 million years ago, mammals developed two branches, of which the main branch is placental mammals, such as us humans, cattle, sheep, lions, tigers, etc., all belong to placental mammals.

There is another small branch of mammals called marsupials, including kangaroos, koalas, and so on. They have evolved pouches physically, because the pups are not yet mature at birth and need to be developed in a pouch. The divergence of these two mammals is likely due to the movement of continental plates, as in Australia, for example, marsupials are much more numerous than placental animals.

However, archaeologists have found that the birthplace of marsupials is likely not Australia, but South America. At that time, South America and Australia were connected by the Antarctic continent, and early marsupials crossed the Antarctic to Australia. Later, Australia was separated from other continents, allowing marsupials to thrive on this isolated continent and develop unique species.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Australia and New Zealand are not far apart, there are no marsupials in New Zealand, which were separated from Australia before the marsupials arrived.

Origin of primates

About 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, that is, 55 million years ago, primates were born. Archaeologists have found through fossil studies that primates at that time were not as large as cats, and about the size of today's squirrels. The brains of these early primates have begun to enlarge, but their most striking feature is that they evolved the thumb. Don't underestimate this tiny thumb, which allows primates to grasp objects with ease, while also holding firmly on tree trunks, which is an important step in the evolution of mammals towards humans.

Many people may wonder why only we humans can evolve into "humans", while other primate animals, such as monkeys and orangutans, have not evolved into "humans".

This is because the primates, although they share a common ancestor, have been diverging for tens of millions of years. About 33 million years ago, the primates diverged into two distinct populations: protomonkeys and apes. By about 12 million years ago, some of the apes had diverged into gibbons and orangutans.

About 7 million years ago, humans began to diverge from apes. In this divergence, humans and the chimpanzee, with whom they are most closely related, eventually separated and became two distinct species. Studies have shown that humans and chimpanzees have 98% similarity in DNA, but it is precisely the remaining 2% that determines the different evolutionary paths of the two.

From Homo sapiens to modern humans

It is worth mentioning that the earliest human fossils found so far are the Chadian Sahel fossils located in West Africa. They are about 7 million years old. These fossils have both the physical characteristics of chimpanzees, such as high brow bones and smaller brains than modern humans, as well as human features, such as flat faces and large faces.

Biologists characterize them as humans, rather than chimpanzees, because they have an important feature that the spinal cord leaves the braincase just below the skull, which means they have an upright walking body.

Elsewhere in Africa, archaeologists have also found many more recent human fossils that can provide a rough picture of how humans evolved.

In Ethiopia, archaeologists have found fossils of a species called Ramida ape, whose feet are not as flexible as monkeys and orangutans, but show greater rigidity, suggesting that Ramida ape man already had the ability to walk on two legs, which was eventually passed on to modern humans.

In the vicinity of Lake Turkana in Kenya, archaeologists have discovered a hominic species called Australopithecus. They lived about 4 million years ago. Australopithecus has shown more pronounced bipedal walking characteristics on its hands and feet, and their brain volume has increased significantly.

In East Africa, a fossil that is more closely related to modern humans has been discovered: Homo erectus from 1.7 million years ago. The brain volume of Homo erectus reached 700 to 1250 cubic centimeters, which is much larger than that of other apes. Archaeological evidence suggests that modern humans evolved from Homo erectus in East Africa.

Early Homo sapiens was not a single species, in addition to us modern humans, there was another hominid called Neanderthals, who had larger brains than our modern humans, but they were shorter in stature and shorter in limbs, and they might look like dwarfs with a big head.

Neanderthals lived on the European continent 40,000 years ago, but today they have disappeared into history.

However, modern scientists have found through DNA analysis that they are not completely "extinct". Because Neanderthals had hybridized with modern humans, modern humans, with the exception of Africans, had about 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in their bodies. So it's not so much that Neanderthals became extinct, but that they evolved and integrated into the population of modern Homo sapiens.

Through these excavated studies of early human fossils, biologists have developed a bold hypothesis about the origins of modern humans, the African origin hypothesis. This hypothesis states that early Homo erectus was born in East Africa, migrated from there, merged with the Neanderthals upon arrival in Europe, and then migrated all the way to Asia and the Americas, eventually conquering the world.

This hypothesis would perfectly explain why only Africans did not have Neanderthal DNA in their bodies. But if this hypothesis is true, it means that all other populations of hominins except for this group of Homo erectus have become extinct, or at least merged with Homo erectus. However, there is a question that no one can say: why did these Homo erectus leave the warm of Africa in the first place, run to the cold north, or even cross the ice and snow to the distant Americas?

Therefore, there are still many mysteries about the origin of mankind waiting to be solved.

The origin of human civilization

Nowadays, human beings have created a glorious civilization that has never appeared on the earth, but compared to the dinosaurs that ruled the earth for 160 million years, our human civilization is actually very young and very short. If we define the Paleolithic as the beginning of human civilization, then this starting point is only 2.6 million years ago. 2.6 million years is long enough for one person, but for Earth, it's just a blink of an eye.

About 780,000 years ago, our ancestors began to move out of Africa to Asia, Europe and other places, where they learned to use fire in order to cope with colder environments. The discovery of fire led to a cascade of activities, such as roasting food over fire, eating cooked food, burning clay with fire, making pottery, and so on. It is worth mentioning that the earliest known ceramics were unearthed in China's Yuchan Cave, which dates back to 15,000 to 18,000 years ago.

In addition to learning to use fire, another special ability of modern humans is language. Some linguists believe that all languages spoken by modern humans have a common origin, and they have identified a list of 100 basic words from all languages and estimated the rate of change in these words at 14% after each millennium It can be inferred that about 100,000 to 10,000 years ago, all humans spoke the same language, and in the time since, this ancient language has evolved into different dialects, and over time, the proportion of dialects has changed more and more, and finally a large number of languages have been formed.

In fact, regardless of whether language has a common origin or not, it is certain that the emergence of language has enabled human cooperation to achieve a leap forward, and mankind has thus entered the Neolithic Age. In this era, humans successfully domesticated plants and animals, and evolved from a precarious gathering and hunting civilization to a cyclical agricultural civilization.

Archaeological evidence suggests that human agriculture began 11,000 years ago, around the upper reaches of the Nile and lower Tigris, where rye cultivation was the mainstay.

The Chinese successfully domesticated rice 8,000 years ago, while in other parts of the world, plants including corn, potatoes, bananas, pumpkins, sorghum, yams, and other plants were domesticated almost all over time. It can be seen that the concept of domesticating plants has been continuously transmitted to all parts of the world at that time.

At the same time as domesticating plants, humans are also domesticating animals. The first to be domesticated by humans were dogs, and the first dogs appeared about 15,000 years ago. Goats, sheep and cattle were also domesticated by humans 7,000 years ago.

The development of agriculture constituted the first step in the construction of a civilized society, which allowed humans to naturally form villages and settlements. On the basis of farming, human beings gradually developed textile industry, animal husbandry, and so on. It can be said that without agriculture, there would be no schools, shopping malls, hospitals, and all urban civilization that followed.

Almost all of the early cities were built along rivers, and they first appeared in Mesopotamia in the two river basins and Egypt in the Nile Valley, almost coinciding with the early emergence of agriculture. Temples can be found in almost all of these ancient cities, and the appearance of such public buildings means that the city has built the prototype of civilization.

The first civilization to be born was pioneered by the Sumerians about 5,500 years ago. They developed writing, trade, industry, and at the same time invented irrigation systems. Since then, their own civilizations have emerged in places such as China, Egypt, and South America.

The earliest known civilization on the mainland is the Shang culture 3,700 years ago, located at the ruins of Yincheng on both banks of the Huan River in present-day northern Henan Province. Archaeological excavations have shown that Yincheng once had a magnificent palace, and there are still a large number of ceramics, stone tools and other works of art in the palace. In the surrounding area, traces of the presence of rice, wheat, pigs, chickens and sheep have also been found. On the remaining bronze and stone tools, as many as 5,000 ancient Chinese characters have been found. A considerable part of these ancient Chinese characters have been handed down and are still used by us today.

To search for the origins is to search for the truth

Okay, that's it, we've almost introduced the book "Origins".

The content of this book can be described as very large, it starts from the origin of the universe, then to the planets, life, dinosaurs, apes, and all the way to the origin of our modern civilization. Although this book does not answer all questions about origins, its search for truth is worth emulating.

Humanity has become the ruler of the planet precisely because we know what it means to seek truth. Because of the pursuit of truth, human beings have discovered the mystery of cultivating plants, thus creating agriculture; because of the pursuit of truth, scientists have discovered various laws of physics, which have promoted mankind to realize industrial revolutions one after another, bringing about various life-changing scientific and technological inventions; because of the pursuit of truth, we have always looked up to the starry sky and continued to move forward on the road of exploring and conquering the universe. The search for truth is the search for origins, and this search will continue.