Chapter 4
The History of Humanity

Around 300,000 years ago, something remarkable appeared on Earth: us. With Homo sapiens came a new kind of power: collective learning. We could store knowledge, share it, and pass it on, each generation building on the last. That skill turned us into the planet's most powerful agent of change, paving the way for agriculture, writing, empires, and trade routes, all of which added new complexity to our world.

Play video
2:30
Chapter at a Glance
40 Minutes
1 Threshold
10 Videos
2 Galleries

How Did Humans Evolve?

Humans: one of the strangest plot twists in the history of the Universe. Our species, Homo sapiens, has only been around for about 300,000 years, but to our knowledge, we're the most complex things the cosmos has produced.

Threshold 6: Collective Learning

How humans are different.
Play video
15:41

Many Species of Humans

Long before Homo sapiens showed up, other hominid species had already taken their turn on the stage. Over millions of years, brains grew, hands adapted, and social bonds deepened. Dozens of human cousins emerged and vanished. These species emerged and migrated at different times, but many of them lived alongside and interacted with each other. They fought and even interbred with each other. It's likely that you carry Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA.

About 80,000 years ago, our species began migrating out of Africa. Our brains and our ability to use symbolic language gave us new tools that made each generation more powerful than the last. When Homo sapiens emerged in Africa 300,000 years ago, we walked in a world of many humans. Soon, we'd be the only ones left.

Play video
3:14

Are we related to Neanderthals? (Podcast)

Using Tools, Shelter, and Fire


Homo erectus
© Carolina Biological/Visuals Unlimited/CORBIS
1 of 5

Out of Africa

Homo erectus lived between 1.9 million and 143,000 years ago. They're thought to be the first of our ancestors to have migrated out of Africa.

Chimpanzees
© Ryan Summers/Creative Commons
2 of 5

Cousins?

Chimpanzees and humans share 98% of their DNA. That's not all that's shared, either. Jane Goodall's scientific observations have shown that chimps make and use tools, and their social interactions mirror those of humans.

Acheulean stone axes
© Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive/CORBIS
3 of 5

Earliest tools

These 1.5-million-year-old Acheulean stone tools, probably made by Homo erectus, represent a revolution in tool making. Stone tools were used for digging, cutting wood, and cutting and skinning game.

Shelter from the elements
© John Reader / Photo Researchers, Inc.
4 of 5

Shelter from the elements

Early humans excelled at adapting to their environment, often using natural formations for shelter. Sites like Blombos Cave, above, have given researchers a glimpse into their daily lives.

Controlling fire
© Anthony Bannister/Gallo Images/CORBIS
5 of 5

Controlling fire

Scientists aren't sure when humans started using fire, but evidence suggests its controlled use occurred between 400,000 and 1 million years ago.

How Did Humans Populate the Earth?

Collective learning helped humans adapt to every environment Earth threw at them—icy tundra, tropical forest, scorching desert. And as human communities migrated, they experimented. Each new landscape demanded new tools, new shelters, new stories. Groups shared ideas, traded materials, and passed knowledge through language and art.

Play video
6:42

Activity

Human Migration

Track human migration since the beginning of our existence

  • 90,000
  • 80,000
  • 70,000
  • 60,000
  • 50,000
  • 40,000
  • 30,000
  • 20,000
  • 10,000
  • 1,000
years

A Global Species

By at least 20,000 years ago, humans had reached almost every corner of the world. They hunted mammoths on the steppe, built rafts to cross open seas, and learned to thrive in places that had never known our kind. Wherever we went, we remade the environment, and the environment remade us.

Collective learning had gone global. By the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago, humanity had become a planetary force, and the stage was set for our next great transformation: the rise of agriculture.

Threshold 6

Collective Learning

  • Ingredients
  • Goldilocks Conditions
  • New Complexity

  • Which of the following is NOT an ingredient for collective learning?

  • Which condition contributed directly to the collective learning process?

  • In addition to connecting with each other and learning new things, how else did collective learning support the advancement of Homo sapiens?

Congratulations!

You've earned the Collective Learning badge

You have unlocked 0 of 8 badges. You're on your way to becoming a Big Historian!

Congratulations

You're a Big Historian

Big Historian sticker

  • Note: US residents only

Share your experience.

Let others know what you've achieved and where they can do the same.

What Was the Agricultural Revolution?

Play video
2:25

Where did the Agricultural Revolution Begin?

The greatest places to eat, 11,000 years ago
© The Big History Project

As the last ice age ended, many humans began to settle down. Populations grew denser, and people had to pull more resources from smaller patches of land. They started experimenting. They planted seeds and tended wild grains. Foragers became farmers. Farming created food surpluses, which meant not everyone needed to be involved in food production. Populations and collective learning exploded. Farming communities grew more complex—and more fragile. We can thank agriculture for many innovations that shape our society today. Taxes, calculus, morning commutes—none of it would have been possible without farming. Thanks, agriculture.

Threshold 7: Agriculture

How farming sows the seeds of civilization.

How Did Farming Change Human Species?

Agriculture changed everything about human lives. Forests were cleared, rivers diverted, and wild species slowly turned domestic or were hunted to extinction. Farmers learned to store grain for lean seasons and trade their surplus food for goods, labor, or protection.

With more food came more people, and with more people came new problems. Labor needed to be organized. Resources needed to be distributed. And cities needed protection from foreigners with pointy sticks.

The first cities formed around fertile river valleys, such as the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow Rivers, where regular flooding provided rich soil for planting.

Play video
5:06

The Rise of Civilization

The pace of collective learning grows
© Tom Martin/JAI/CORBIS
1 of 5

The pace of collective learning grows

When agriculture appeared, history seemed to speed up. Five thousand years after the appearance of agriculture, the number of humans had increased from just a few million to almost 50 million. This rapid growth was made possible by an increase in the number of innovations.

Strong as an ox
© Bojan Brecelj/CORBIS
2 of 5

Farming power

An ox delivers about ten times more power than a human. So when farmers domesticated their livestock it represented a revolution, as animals could till more land and carry more goods over distances, helping farmers connect to and feed more communities.

Irrigation produces a surplus
© George Steinmetz/CORBIS
3 of 5

Irrigation produces a surplus

Humans began using irrigation techniques to help control water supplies and produce larger harvests. These food surpluses freed up others to specialize in other areas.

The Code of Hammurabi
© Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS
4 of 5

The first law of the land

As towns and cities grew, some sort of social organization was needed. One of the greatest legacies of Mesopotamia may be the The Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest records of law.

Detailed mural depicting a bustling Aztec marketplace in Tenochtitlan, painted with vibrant colors.
Credit: Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0.
5 of 5

Cornerstones of the earliest civilization

Along with specialization, eight key characteristics distinguish agrarian civilization: cities, monumental architecture, rulers, hierarchies, tax systems, armies, peasant farmers, and writing.

What Came First, Farming or Religion?

For a long time, farming got all the credit for launching civilization. But what if humanity's first great invention wasn't agriculture, but belief?

At Göbekli Tepe, in modern-day Turkey, archaeologists uncovered limestone pillars nearly 12,000 years old, built long before anyone thought to plant a seed. The site looks a little like a prehistoric cathedral. It was built by nomadic people who decided hauling multi-ton stones was a good weekend project. There are no houses, no hearths, no wells. Instead, the site offers towering carvings, ritual spaces, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Göbekli Tepe poses an important question. We always thought religion developed because of the development of agriculture. But what if it was the other way around? What if faith, not food first brought humans together in large, organized groups and only later, agriculture grew to support them. Maybe humans started building temples before they built towns.

© Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic Society/CORBIS

The First Cities and States

Play video
10:45

The Social Pyramid

As agricultural societies grew, complex webs of interdependence began to form. Farmers fed artisans and soldiers. Soldiers and artisans supported elites. Elites told everyone else what to do. Out of these networks, the first cities began to rise.

But cities were complex, unruly places. To keep it all running, states emerged to manage resources, enforce laws, and collect taxes. And when persuasion failed, states had another tool ready at hand: force. Civilization had arrived in all its brilliance and brutality.

Play video
5:42

Activity

Ancient Cities

Learn about ancient cities around the world

  • Timbuktu - Mali

    Timbuktu is a Medieval West African city established in the 12th century on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, surrounded by sand dunes, with streets covered in sand. In the West, its name has become synonymous with exotic locales. Timbuktu flourished from trade in salt, gold, ivory and slaves. The city is now within the Republic of Mali, with about 30,000 inhabitants, impoverished and suffering from encroaching desertification.

    timbuktu mali

  • Petra - Ma'an, Jordan

    Petra is cut out of rose-colored rock in a valley near the Dead Sea, established about 312 BCE as the capital city of the Nabataeans, and inhabited until 663. Though precipitation in the valley averages just 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) per year, at its height, Petra was able to maintain a population of 40,000 people through an intricate system of channels, cisterns, pipes and reservoirs to supply constant water throughout the year.

    Petra

  • Angkor Wat - Siem Reap, Cambodia

    Angkor Wat is a temple complex built in the 12th century by the Khmer king Suryavarman II. Its name means "City of the Temples." The complex is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas, or deities, in Hindu mythology. A moat and outer wall 3.6 kilometers (2.2 miles) long border three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stand five towers, each adorned with extensive bas-reliefs.

    Angkor Wat

  • Chaco - New Mexico, United States

    Chaco is a shallow, 16-kilometer-long (10-mile-long) canyon in remote northwestern New Mexico, blazing hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, accessible only by dirt roads. Pueblo people lived there as early as 2900 BCE, but around 850 CE they suddenly began constructing a massive city of stone, with buildings four or five stories tall and with up to 700 rooms. Abandonment probably coincided with a 50-year drought that began in 1130.

    Chaco

  • Chichen Itza - Yucatán, Mexico

    Chichen Itza is one of the largest Maya cities, built from about 600 CE, in decline by 1250. The city was occupied by the Spanish conquistadors from 1527 to 1535, and again from 1588 forward until the establishment of Mexico. About 1.2 million people visit the city each year. The photo is of the Temple of Kukulcan, or El Castillo. The four sides of the pyramid contain 365 steps in total, with the final 365th step on top representing the solar year.

    Chichen Itza

  • Machu Picchu - Cusco, Peru

    Machu Picchu, or "old peak," is a 15th-century Inca settlement thought to have been built as a royal estate, located 2,430 meters (about 8,000 feet) above sea level. It's often called "the Lost City of the Inca," because it was unknown to the Spanish during their conquest. It remained largely unknown to Europeans until 1912, though two indigenous Quechua were farming some of the original terraces at the time of its "discovery."

    Machu Picchu

The Ancient World

Play video
5:40

Ancient Trade and Conflict

As civilizations grew, so did their appetites. Cities became hubs of production and trade. Ambitious rulers looked beyond their borders and saw opportunity. Empires emerged, fueled by conquest and the desire to own more stuff.

Trade routes soon connected these empires. Mesopotamian grain, Egyptian gold, Indus Valley cotton, and Chinese silk moved across continents. Along with goods came ideas, technologies, war, and the occasional plague. As our societies got more complex and interconnected, fragility followed. Empires rose and fell in cycles of innovation and failure, but each left behind its own unique legacy.

Play video
5:40

Persians & Greeks: Ancient Superpowers

Ancient Empires Expand

As empires expanded, populations boomed, cities sprawled, and governments grew more complicated and expensive. Maintaining roads, armies, and bureaucracies didn't come cheap. To survive, states looked outward. Conquest and trade became tools to offset shrinking resources at home. In a world of rising costs, expansion became an imperial survival strategy.

Play video
4:23

Threshold 7

Agriculture

  • Ingredients
  • Goldilocks Conditions
  • New Complexity

  • In addition to a better understanding of the natural world and environment, what else was a key ingredient in the development of agriculture?

  • Which of the following conditions was an essential precursor to agriculture flourishing?

  • This new age ushered in the existence of villages, cities, and agrarian civilizations, increased access to food and energy sources, as well as…

Congratulations!

You've earned the Agriculture badge

You have unlocked 0 of 8 badges. You're on your way to becoming a Big Historian!

Congratulations

You're a Big Historian

Big Historian sticker

  • Note: US residents only

Share your experience.

Let others know what you've achieved and where they can do the same.