Do you want to talk to somebody special but that person is on the other side of the world?
Simply pick up your phone and start talking!
Do you want to eat a burger but the restaurant is too far away?
Open a food delivery app that is right on your fingertips and order away!
Do you want to know the weather tomorrow?
Relaxedly Google it!
But wait, how did you do all that? How are you reading this piece I wrote and it appeared in front of you?
Imagine living billions of years ago. Would you be able to do all the things that you can do now?
You could barely even communicate with others. Look at how much we have evolved!
I’m sure all of us living in the modern age right now wouldn’t be able to survive for even a day in the primitive age.
A long time ago, matter and energy started to hug each other and formed together to create atoms. Following the footsteps of matter and energy, atoms began to hug each other and together formed molecules. This is called chemistry, one of the oldest forms of science in the world.
The oldest science, older than chemistry, however, is physics. Physics first came into existence 13.5 billion years ago. After physics and chemistry were born, they just hung out for a few billion years until Earth came around.
Earth came into existence 4.5 billion years ago. When Earth came into existence, biology came along too.
And that’s where the first living thing comes in. Microbes or microscopic organisms are the first living life ever recorded on planet earth. I was expecting the first living thing to be a plant or a fish or a dinosaur, but it’s something else that bare eyes can’t even see.
Fast forward to 6 million years ago, the typical last grandmother of humans and chimpanzees passed away. So, even if humans and chimpanzees look entirely different, chimpanzees are our ancestors!
I never thought reading about things such as how everything came into existence would be so interesting. When I first started reading the book Sapiens By Yuval Noah Harari (This book is the inspiration for this article), I didn’t want to read it. Because first of all, this is a vast book, and huge books are very intimidating. But as I kept reading on, I learned a lot of things and without even knowing, I was enjoying the book. Reading this book has also taught me not to judge a book by its cover, but before even reading Sapiens, I assumed it would be boring.
So after humans and chimpanzees went their separate ways, humans would slowly evolve to be the most advanced creatures on Earth. And, chimpanzees are still chimpanzees (no offense to the chimps!).
At this point, humans aren’t quite human yet. Humans still have the characteristics of a chimpanzee. We can’t call them human.
However, 2.5 million years ago, the official human species came into existence! I’m surprised it took our ancestors like 4 million years to evolve from chimpanzee-human to human-human. The first genus of Homo has finally developed in Africa.
Even if the early humans were very new, they were brilliant. They have already learned to carve tools out of stones. Even if they were simple tools that did not require much planning or anything, it was still a very impressive move for the new humans to make.
I’m impressed. And this is just the beginning. Who would have thought that a small group of new humans would be the most advanced creatures in the future?
And with the next step they took, they’ve just impressed me more. They learned how to travel!
So yes, they spread from Africa to Eurasia, and the humans born in Eurasia were called Neanderthals. They are now wholly replaced by Europeans, though.
In winters, humans were not evolved to bear hibernation for so long. Even with food, they would most likely freeze to death. So what was the solution? Fire. What is now one of the leading causes of pollution was once the great solution. Everything was so perfect about the fire. The fire was used to warm obviously and to cook food. And with that efficacy, the fire started to be used daily by the new people.
Imagine being hungry in an era where the fire had just been discovered. How would you tell everyone that you were hungry? The new humans didn’t have a language, so they used hand gestures or made sounds. But their actions were much more advanced from the inception. If they saw danger approaching them, they could not only alert everyone but also describe what kind of danger was coming in a short amount of time. Primitive humans were seriously true geniuses.
Five thousand years ago, humans started becoming a little greedy. By now, they’ve already learned how to adapt to nature, they already know how to survive winter, what to eat, where to stay, when to sleep and more.
They had started to live in an organized manner. This is where ‘Royalty’ comes into existence. The Kings sat on thrones with the Queens beside them in a palace. Everything seemed perfect. But there were many kings with many queens. And that’s where greediness started.
The Kingdoms started fighting for land and wealth. They did bloodshed and brutally killed innocent people just for wealth and respect. Wars were happening very frequently. Nevertheless, there was no such thing as ‘perfect.’ So the only imperfection this world had up until now were wars.
With the wars in their place, the world started making more development everywhere. The money came its way by the invention. People started selling things to gather money. But now there became too many sellers. So, people started making things to earn money. And with that, everybody started working.
Now, humans have unlocked level three of living. They have realized that wars are doing nothing but harm to the world, so they simply stopped making wars.
After that, the world evolved so fast. People made simple machines for work purposes. Then people thought of making simple toys just for entertainment.
After that, people started making more advanced technologies. The computer was made. Then landline phones were made. Cell phones were made. And just like that, now people are sending rockets up into space. Technology and humans have evolved so much.
And that’s how you’re reading this; I mean through technology.
So well written