It's wild people having to watch this for school. I just binge watch this stuff on youtube for fun so it's awesome schools are making learning entertaining

A wealth of new knowledge. As it nears midnight & bedtime, I will sleep dreaming of being a paleontologist. I have the greatest respect for people who put in the long hours, days, weeks, months & years to provide mankind with knowledge of the past.

this stuff is amazing and fascinating but god, it must be so difficult to say anything definitively about the big picture because it's like putting together a 1000 piece puzzle where 900 of the pieces are hidden and the ones you have are all broken. it's ever changing, it's beautiful and overwhelming.

What always seems to get overlooked and underappreciated in most of these discussions is that it is very likely our ancestors, since apes, have been making and using tools (mostly bone and wood) - just not making stone tools which according to recent discoveries may go back 3.3 million years.

we need more people like sean and tim, he is so zealous about his work and teaching it to the world.

I remember being an 11 year old asking my mum to please buy me the book with the strange human like apes in it. Then it was quit difficult to understand but it blew me away. In school we had religion class with God creating everything and here I had this wonderful book that said something totally different. It made me think and go look for other books about fossils. A whole new world opened up for me. I may say that I was a dinosaur enthusiast long before Jurassic Park. I’m so glad that my mother bought that book so many years ago, it changed my way of thinking and made me look with awe at the natural world.

Recently a direct ancestor of Lucy was unearthed not far from where Lucy was found by the same Yohannes Haile-Salassie mentioned in this video. Forensic scientists were able to reconstruct its face, making it the earliest human ancestor that we have a good idea of what it looked like. It also appears that australopithecines are not our direct ancestors, but rather a separate lineage closely related to us.

My teacher is making me watch this

quarantine homework!

In less than 20 minutes, you taught a usable history lesson that applies to every living human being on Earth. Excellent job. Thank you! This was, by far, one of the best KZfaq videos ever done on this subject.

Very high-quality video, beautiful work, not too long. Bravo! This is the kind of effective teaching tool that is needed.

Our species is just amazing. The fact that we can know anything about this universe makes our arrangement of atoms special.

the story of human evolution is a truly beautiful thing. i'm glad to live in a time like this where we are able to learn about our lowly origins. started from the bottom, now we're here!

It's wonderful to be taken through the history of discovery and learn about our shared human history and connection to other species. Thank you!

I can't imagine a career which requires more patience.

In my graduate research from about 20 years ago, I concluded that bipedality first emerged in an arboreal environment. Nobody I told this to at the time gave my hypothesis much credence, but I knew I was right, partly because I found the savanna hypothesis to be unworkable. One also needs to bear in mind that the old growth forest environment back then contained trees with horizontal branch runs that were large enough for hominins to transverse easily bipedally where they could stabilize themselves by reaching out - brachiating - for balance, the way present day orangs and gibbons do. Thus, bipedality emerged not as a primary, but as a secondary trait, a trait that was just what the species needed when the Savannah grasslands began to emerge.

Great teaching, and it only took about 19 min. Thank you.

I was really moved seeing how excited everyone involved in these discoveries were, even just revisiting the memories of making the discoveries!

I am required to watch this for class, but I am trying my best to stay interested and truly learn it. Very cool stuff.

Though I'm a late riser, morning is my very favourite.History is the mornings and Archeology is the early mornings.

I really enjoy the videos that hhmi posts. Always worthwhile to watch.

Fabulous. This is the story of our beginning. Most interesting story ever told.

Cannot wait to find more about our origins

Excellent videos! Most educational.

Just pure brilliance amazing!

How curious they are about their work. This makes it very interesting. Love you guys for your efforts

It is amazing how all those fossils from different geological epochs are so easily found on the surface today!

This video has good production quality, camera work, and audio.

Forgot language! And the evolved location of the human larynx. That's the huge difference between humans and all other living things: Our ability to communicate complex ideas and emotions.

Thank you for the film congratulation for your job!!!

Spectacular work, and I hope that we will continue to explore with open minds, as there is infinite time and space beyond the ages we have unearthed and revealed so far

I love like this kind of stuff about human it’s give me hope to see the future. Thank you guys!!👌🏾👌🏾

Amazing. A true eye opener that’s very well done.

My neighbor is definitely not human, although he has all the traits. Is he from a different species?

Human brain is like an empty hard-drive with basic built-in traits or senses. It evolves with outside interaction and it communicates accordingly. Some basic functions of organs don't require to be taught. Those are built-in if brain functions normally.

Utterly fascinating, much respect to the persistence of scientists and their commitment to research 📚💡 Just how we became Human. Side Note: Anazing how some people have not accepted these fundamental truths 🤷🏾‍♂️

This is amazing. Thank you.

Who's here because of online school

What makes us human is our brain. The evolution of the brain is the key. I'm no scientist but it seems to me the evolution of the brain triggered with emerging from the deep jungle. In the jungle the sense of sight was only useful at very close distance. By the time you saw a predator it was too late. As the jungle shrank eyesight became more useful and the pre-humans began to stand up on to feet to look over tall grass and further. As they did this they began to "think" about what they saw. They couldn't smell or hear it but they "learned" about what they saw. This led to reason, predicting the movement of a prey or predator. They probably lived largely on insects and seeds easily obtainable. When they saw grass moving abnormally they learned it was a hoard of grasshoppers and they would gorge themselves on them and recognize from a distance a patch of berries or other food sources. The wider open the plains became the more useful eyesight. The more they used eyesight the more thy used their brain to think about what they saw. The eyes and brain evolved together. In later times they would see quarry, deer for example, and predict where they might intercept them and develop sophisticated hunting strategy. Thinking became more and more useful. Keenest eyesight and biggest brains were the "fittest" and it probably really accelerated compared to pelvises and such.

Thank you for the video, it certainly gives us all something to think about.

Very well made documentary. Although more recent evidence has shown Australopithecus could make a few simple stone tools.

Bravo excellent video!

Very good indeed. Great music at the end too.

Why didn't they include Orrorin Tugenensis in the video? Orrorin fossil which was found in Kenya dates back 6 mya. It is also a hominid, bipedal tree dweller like Ardi only more ancient than the Ardipithecus specie.

Im really intrested to know the details about the changing point in which ancient primates become early hominids because this is an important station in human evolution.

I had to stop the video from time to time to shiver. Oh for a time machine. And either of those early homonids could be the ancestor of someone alive today.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge well done sir!

Excelente trabajo

Great doc`o , well made

10:30 Millions of years old footprints, ancestors who weren't even using tools, but walked upright through the volcanic mud. I see an adult, a child, and what appears to be some sort of dog!

I like how easily they can explain the latter and time line

Wow amazing video, I love learning about how we evolved, trying to keep myself from being ignorant , watched it twice

Excellent video which explains our lineage using archaeological evidences. Also try the quiz in there website :)

it was mind blowing and recommenced by my anthropology teacher :))

Wow. Just wow such a long evolutionary history of we human. Worth watching.

great video , thanks

I followed documentaries and remember the finding of Lucy

great piece of work I need more more more

Does Dr Tim White love this stuff?? YEP...if everyone could enjoy what they do, half as much as him. I am impressed by people like Dr White.

I chuckled at the quarantine homework comments. Please understand, though, that videos like this represent the very small percentage of reasonably accurate and informative scientific discussion on the internet. So the teacher did you a solid.

Fantastic video! I liked it so much that I'm citing it in my book.

Who got the answers bruhh 🤣

Well your teacher is very smart & wants you to learn something important.

Thank you for not having blaring background music. 😊

The existence of the Kenhamopithecus suggests that evolution goes both ways

I was always interested in Dinosaurs. That progressed to evolution and how it actually works. Religious zealots hate evolution, as it throws into disarray their carefully crafted fantasy world. That in itself is worth the time taken to understand the subject, even at a basic level.

Amazing documentary! Keep it up

Simply enthralling 👍👍

Come a long way from a single cell.

this guy has evolved beyond the need for an uper lip

Fascinating! Thank you.

at 12:29, while tim white is recounting the story of a then-grad student finding the fossil, the captions say "[? Johannes ?] [INAUDIBLE]" -- the name he said was that of yohannes haile-selassie, a renowned ethiopian paleoanthropologist.

Excellent Video !!! What books would you recommend so that I can learn more ?

Lucy in the valley with footprints...

Awesome!

great video

This makes me wonder what we will evolve further into in another million years; should the earth even last that long.

Love this kind of videos

Good information.

SO incredible

Better story than creation of adam and eve.

They are making a leap. The second skull could have been a petering out “losing” branch of evolution and not necessarily our ancestor. That would open up the timeframe for development. Need to protect against “tunnel vision” earthlings lol

Crawling a continent with a laser focus looking for tiny remnants of bons. Human’s thirst to know is just amazing

Anyone knows the song from around 18:50? Thanks!

So, a couple of million years in the future, what will anthropologists discover of our species?

Stuff just keeps changing.

cool stuff!

Watched it again and sent it to my brothers and sisters

I remember watching this in 6th grade and after our teacher played Lucy in the sky with diamonds

Annunaki!!!

Fabulous video...

Thanks

These finds are amazing but I do worry that some of them might just be extinct primates not along our lineage at all. I can see how some of these early discoverers might wish their discoveries to be hominid and therefore interpret them as such with a little bias. Like Lucy's pelvis. Still amazing finds.

Reality always wins

Excellent

10:37 mindblowing a nature snap shot

I have hairy knuckles still. Where do I fit?

So you’re telling me Sasquatch and Bigfoot actually existed

Keep digging Must have been difficult to continue after LUCY,like looking for a ancient water molecule in sargasso sea,pay offs are few and far between

Fascinating