"You are connected to eons and eons of creatures all fighting for survival and WINNING." Great motivational quote there.

So basically if I never have kids, I'll be the first failure of my entire ancestral lineage spanning back nearly 4 billion years....No pressure xD

so spongebob was the great-great-...-great-great-great-...-great-great-grandfather of us all?!

The real crazy part is that life somehow formed from inert elements basically because carbon acts like glue.

mistake at 0:07 ; should be "You are the living Descendant" not "Living Ancestor"!

A counter thought to this video is the Anthropic Principle, where the only reason you can appreciate that you are the end of a chain of life is because you are one of the alive ones. All the creatures that don't exist cannot contemplate their non-existence. I like the Anthropic Principle but thought that it might undermine the 'mind blowing' part of this video but I don't think it does because even though it is true, it is not scientifically useful. Because we know a lot about our evolutionary history we can look at it and see all of the places where the path to humanity was nearly wiped out, or where seemingly improbable events happened like the formation of the first complex cells or evolving multicellularity. So I think our evolutionary journey is still incredible despite it having to exist for me to appreciate it.

So.. one of my ancestors was a sponge...

Old ladies: The pinnacle of evolution

I was expecting at least a few millions of views. This channel is just too great of an opportunity to be missed by anyone.

Wanted to watch this video for educational purposes… but this honestly made me feel so much more grateful for my life and to stop taking all the other lucky humans I meet/live here for granted.. as we are all very lucky to be alive.

Great video ! I can only imagine the amount of work put in to draw all the animals, impressive ! It may have been interesting to stretch the picture to scale, maybe for a future video ?

Just want to say that I watched a Ted talk you did awhile back and you mentioned you made KZfaq videos so I looked you up and I have watched so many of these. They are absolutely fantastic. I love the animations and the way you neatly explain topics that are fundamental to science. I am an astrophysics major in college and often find myself wondering about recent discoveries (like the gravitational waves) and I find you explain these things in such an immaculate way. So thank you.

What a great explanation. I’ve been reading about this subject for many years, and this vid summarizes it in a few minutes. Of course, it’s incomplete and simple. But how can one ask more in such a short time. Subscribed.

Wow, this channel is so informative and answers plenty of my complex questions. Great work!

Loved this! Pretty amazing to think that we are just links in an unbroken living chain that stretches back billions of years.

I am the ANCESTOR of a chain of life including all of that stuff? You mean descendant?

Here's a nice way to some it up: "Life on Earth is one big extended family" -My biology textbook

Please make more Map videos! They are just amazing, one of the most interesting educational videos i have seen in a while.

Basically, all life from the tiniest microbes to the biggest whales to the tallest trees are related. All life on Earth has the 4-base pairs in their DNA, linking all life to one common ancestor that existed in the Earth's early oceans. So basically, we're all one big happy family if you think about it! *MIND BLOWN*

Once again, great video and poster! I ordered 9 posters this morning, but I think I need to get this one as well!

0:37 wrong, the theory of evolution states that all life originated from a single common ancestor, not that life gets more complex as more life forms emerge.1:05 I wouldn’t call it a chain by any means at all, A chain would be a cycle happening over and over. Evolution doesn’t work that way, it’s more like multiple lines splitting off from one central line, this central line would be the common ancestor between all the other lines. P.S. these lines all grouped up with the central line is called a Clade.1:31 10,000 years ago?! Which group of modern Homo Sapiens are you talking about? The Homo genus can date our African common ancestry back to around 2 million years ago with one of the first being Homo Habilis or “Handy Man”.1:55 Homo Habilis wasn’t an ancestor, he was a relative who speciated from the common ancestor shared with Homo Erectus. However, Erectus was a common ancestor shared between us Neanderthalensis and Heidelbergensis (who in turn was the common ancestor between us and Neanderthalensis). Also, it’s MYA(Millions of years ago), not MA but i’m sure someone pointed that out already. 2:13 Thank you for saying “most of the dinosaurs” people seem to forget or just not know that Birds are the only living lineage of the Dinosaurs that didn’t get killed in the K-Pg mass extinction :)3:11 it’s been hypothesized that our Universal Common Ancestor wasn’t the FIRST lifeform on Earth and could have been the first organism that actually managed to survive in the chaotic landscape of Earth Billions of years of ago. There could have been hundreds or even thousands of organisms that came before our UCA! Just FYI.3:51 This is more of a personal opinion, but I see no point in preserving species that we have no beneficial or mutualistic relationship with. All life forms go extinct eventually, including us. Overall your video wasn’t completely inaccurate but did have quite a few errors in it. I hope you didn’t take this as an attack or anything, (and if i missed anything someone let me know) it’s just that I study Evolutionary Biology and I want to make sure that the public is correctly educated on this subject, this outdated and inaccurate “chain of life” concept is just one of the many inaccuracies that hope to see extinguished or minimized from human societies. The phylogenetic Tree of Life model is always being updated and is much more scientifically accurate and I think many folks would find it more fascinating, less anthropocentric, and very cool :) Also, for anyone interested learning in. Evolutionary Biology or any kind of Biology I would recommend the “understanding evolution “ series from the University of Berkeley or the Encyclopedia of life project!

Your video is why I love nature and animals. Because everything alive around me are fellow survivors aka winners who are here. We made it. We are making it. This is why I care about the environment my fellow winners inhabit (including winners of our own species aka people who are alive rn obviously). This video is the logical rational reason why I am an environmentalist. Sure I’m also an athlete and a cook and a son etc but I will always also be an environmentalist. We must preserve as much biodiversity as possible. Even within Christianity for example, our first God given job was to name animals and tend to the garden and maintain the peace within the garden. NEVER to reduce the diversity in the garden not to harm it. Yet humanity is constantly reducing biodiversity to this very day with its harmful practices. We are constantly harming our big round vast planetary garden. We are pretty sucky gardeners. So I agree with you. We aught to preserve biodiversity. Help our fellow winners out not get rid of them. We need nations to be more Green minded Nations. Gotta protect the environment. It’s not working though. Governments don’t care. So the only way to make them care is to infiltrate them so environmentalists can have a say again. We need green Senators. Green congressmen. Green everybody. Heck why not even a Green prime minister. Or a green president too.

ancient Cyanobacteria are definitely NOT our ancestors. they are on a separate photosynthetic strand of prokaryotes. neither are ancient Cnidarians. regarding ancient sponges we don't know yet

But WHY did "a mix of chemicals" start replicating ?

You deserve waaaay more views! Great video! Keep it up!

Would love if your posters were also available as apparel - would wear this in a heartbeat!

Learning about evolution gives me the feeling that I’m learning about my family history 🤘🏻 makes me feel happy 😆

er, there seems to be an error at the very start, one that doesn't inspire confidence in the narrator's qualifications ... surely "You are the living ancestor" should be "You are the living descendent" ...?

I am no expert and I appreciate what you tried to explain through this video but if there's anything I have learnt from creationists, it's that creationists are unable to distinguish between a linear ancestor and a common ancestor. Creationists unironically think that we came from a linear chain of older animals which is preposterous. You did point out about common ancestry here but if creationists were watching this, they would believe even more firmly that evolution is a straight chain and not a web. I wish people who made videos on evolution discussed common ancestry in more detail for I believe knowledge on it remains most misunderstood among public.

This is beautifully presented but contains at least one major error. Cyanobacteria are not part of the origin of animals leading to vertebrates. This was pointed out below by Amir Rubinstein and perhaps others. I just saw this video and encourage you to fix this error. Professor K

I feel so connected to the universe after this 😌🙏 thank you and God bless you 😉

Your videos and posters are phenomenal. Bravo!

It seems absolutely absurd to me that there are people nowadays who still deny evolution. It is the most rational explanation that biological evidence points to. And for all those people using the "it's a THEORY argument", could you first look up what a theory in science is please.

As someone with no kids the unbroken chain of life is a deeply depressing thought

The giant sloth and “gorilla horse” images are misleading because they aren’t our direct ancestors like everything else in the graphic. Also shouldn’t the very end of the line be RNA, or even branched out to represent the combination of different organisms into what became cellular life, eg mitochondria. Love your maps and unique art style, keep up the great work!

I was surprised to learn how old our unbroken chain is. It's not much younger than it possibly could be, a large chunk of time not all that much younger than the universe itself.

Your approach to deal with most complicated subjects is praiseworthy, I wish ur videos should be included in academics round the world.....I got fundamentals of medicine, engineering, maths ...through your videos only ....great work ..GBU..

Great Sketch ! whats even more amazing is that in the Womb before birth, you go THROUGH some of those earlier life forms shapes and forms before finally reaching to be a human baby. Yes, you grow a tail, loose it, grow hair like a wild animal and loose it etc. etc. blows my mind

Aye love this channel

I think it's great how we acquired the scientific knowledge to reconstruct how our evolutionary chain might have looked like! Amazing! A few days ago our cat brought a mouse in our house and I took a few seconds to realize this is how we somewhat looked like 80-90M years ago.

Somewhere there is a very triggered creationist.

No. I just can’t get by the fact that there is a giant horse on this timeline. We don’t have them in our chain.

I love the preservation of biodiversity as the takeaway!! And you could extend the increasing complexity and diversity of life back even further, to the seemingly inevitable increasing complexity and diversity of rocks, minerals, elements, and all other abiotic components of existence. I don't think it's a stretch to say that biodiversity is the very point of existence, and yet the lives we lead every day in industrial civilization brutalize that legacy and strip away the Earth's ability to sustain complex biomes. Let's turn that around shall we?

"3.7 billion years of evolution has failed you" sounds like a great insult

I like to think that other creatures apart from us are in the earlier stages of their evolution and they too will evolve as an intelligent species one day . Well who knows , it makes me excited to think like that .

I'm a bit unclear about how life got started. I understand that animal life evolved initially in the sea - perhaps around the thermal vents - but where did plants fit on that time line? Were there already plants on the land before the first animals crawled out of the sea? If so, did they evolve from underwater plants? I came across this channel while searching for the transition from plants to animals, to see how that happened. How about fungi - where to they fit on the time line?

He didn’t explain where it all started?

Very informative, your videos are amazing! Thank you so much for these quality videos.

Nice to see our ancestors who have not evolved yet. Like the fish, mice, monkeys and SpongeBob. Also, evidently, the ones who can not use iPhones these days :P

Very pleasant journey back through time. Slightly confusing though to have megatherium and hlaliosthere drawn seemingly as part of the chain.

in before all the creationists infest the comments section.

Does it mean that the whole living organisms including plants, animal world and human origin from that ONE ancient replicator cell? Thus does it mean that all living creatures are related to each other?

Real enlightenment is not only when you accept scientific truths, but when you also accept scientific truths that are conflict with your world view.

Hey! Love your work! Can you also do the "Map of Philosophy"?

So far, 54 comments in, the best one is the dude rambling about aliens and the bible and some alien god thingy. Anybody want to try to top that?

Fun fact: the first life organism ever was LUCA, or Last Universal Common Ancestor. Like if you already knew.

Amazing Video! Keep it up. ;)

What blows my mind is that people can believe that a 3 billion character self-replicating code like DNA can form from natural processes.

Just recently discovered your channel and I love it! This video was great and I can't wait to see more!

49 dislikes are from creationists

Existing complex forms aren't due to competition and environmental pressure. New forms only arise due to mutation. Competition and environmental pressure just kill all the other things off. It's not like some environmental feature magically makes an animal change in a certain way. Mutation introduces the change, which just happens to sometimes make an organism more fit in the environment it happens to be in.

Fun fact: The Christian pope believes in evolutions so you guys have no excuse for your ignorance ( I’m sure you will find a way tho )

Pretty sure I don’t have giant horse in my DNA.

It's funny because it's not true at all.. you're just talking about the Darwin theory, it is just a theory.. man Go look to the scientists who criticize the Darwin theory of evolution, in fact there are many scientists disagreed with this theory

Thank you so much for making this. Crazy to be here, alive.

Here's another misconception busted: We are STILL evolving guys!! We are not "the end" of the chain of evolution. Humans, or what we define as human today is still changeing and adapting over time, evolving to something new depending on our environment, as long as life exsist on earth evolution Never ends

Great material so wonderfully displayed!

Except, everything that happened to life in pre-Cambrian periods is highly speculative and controversial.

Far far far from reality and complexity of natural evolution. But, even so, is a great step forward to start thinkink on this subject. Thanks for your wonderful job.

Evolution - The newest religion So much faith is needed for this worldview

its very inspiring to see that my whole genetic makeup is made from WINNING, and more WINNING I will do

29 creationists don't like this video

not even 10 seconds in and he busts out the "your mother"

ATHEIST PROPAGANDA! /s

Beautiful video, can you make a video about human evolution 😁 plllz I don’t understand it very well 😁😁🙏🏻🙏🏻

This is great but I’m disappointed you added the chalicothere and megatherium. I thought this is meant to be the homo-sapiens phylogenetic branch? I was gonna put this poster on my wall 😭

Is more mind blowing when you realise most of the animals that ever existed are extinct

Key point is this video states "common ancestor," not that we necessarily directly descended from such. Either way, evolution of the material body is compatible with Christianity (at least for Catholics).

You, as a Human, Can be Classified as a Lobe-Finned Fish.

I still don't understand why most people are interested in preserving species, biodiversity and such. From my point of view, extinction is also an important part of evolution, even if it's forced by the human hand and machinery, it forces the rest of the species to either evolve and survive the "human uprising" or simply cease to exist eventually. Tell me what you think about this. For instance, if any particular specie is not viable for any given reason, let's say their horns are being harvested for money, then they will eventually evolve without that particular gene to stop producing tusks, or they will just disappear altogether, thus forcing the humans to "evolve" (very slightly) and find a new thing to harvest and exchange for money (pretty much what's going to happen with petroleum once it runs out, except that it comes from already dead and fossilized animals/plants, and not alive ones)

You are the living ancestor of your children.

Do plants and animals have a common ancestor too if you go back far enough?

“The Overriding Supremacy of the Myth” In recent years some scientists have raised serious doubts about the viability of the theory of evolution as expressed by Charles Darwin. This is especially true of molecular biologists. In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton, a researcher in biology, wrote: “The raising of the status of Darwinian theory to a self-evident axiom has had the consequence that the very real problems and objections with which Darwin so painfully laboured in the Origin have become entirely invisible. Crucial problems such as the absence of connecting links or the difficulty of envisaging intermediate forms are virtually never discussed and the creation of even the most complex of adaptations is put down to natural selection without a ripple of doubt.” He continues: “The overriding supremacy of the myth has created a widespread illusion that the theory of evolution was all but proved one hundred years ago . . . Nothing could be further from the truth.”-Page 77. “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”-Origin of Species, Charles Darwin, page 154. “As the number of unexplained, irreducibly complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin’s criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that science allows.” (Darwin’s Black Box-The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Michael J. Behe, pages 39-40) In other words, recent findings in the field of molecular biology raise serious doubts about Darwin’s theory. “The result of [the] cumulative efforts to investigate the cell-to investigate life at the molecular level-is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery rivals those of Newton and Einstein, Lavoisier and Schrödinger, Pasteur, and Darwin. The observation of the intelligent design of life is as momentous as the observation that the earth goes around the sun.”-Darwin’s Black Box, pages 232-3.

Isn't the "gorilla horse" called a chalicothere, not a haliocthere? You're missing two letters.

i guess it does in fact make sense that 2:49 is the most recent common ancestor between humans and mr squarepants

Loved this video. Thx very much for doing it!

Thanks a lot ,for such kind of information , please make detailed videos on DNA including all animals of Animal Kingdom

Wonderful 👍 thanks for the information 😊

I edited this message, here's two things i learned from 10 months of my experience in life : 1. I shouldn't believe things too early 2. I shouldn't be too childish

such a gem of a channel!

Great video! Thanks for making it.

thats fucking mind blowing fr

Every Animal In Your DNA Abusing, exploiting, using and consuming any other beings, is actually doing all that to our own ancestors. It's just plain ignorance if anyone does it, but if anyone realises this, and still does it, then there's absolutely something really deeply concerning about them.

Apparently the Greeks had it right. It seems the first lifeforms evolved out of clay.

A brilliant video- well done!

In the opening of the video and in the description you are confusing ancestor with descendant.

Beautiful to see how very special I really am. I'm a miracle.

If tiktaalik was 375m years ago, there must have been youtoobik arnd 500m years ago ago

I've put this 4 billion year old story into a minimal amount of words for my son's, took me hours + they lose interest in 4 minutes.. this guy,,,wrapped it up in 3:56 holy heck 🎉ty my friend

How did I make it to this section of KZfaq