Everything You Need to Know About Evolution

in the past few billion years Earth has been pummeled by asteroids crashed into other planets and frozen over several times not to mention being ruled by all kinds of crazy life forms sometimes it's a wonder that our blue home world has survived at all but if we want to take a whirlwind tour of our planet's history we'll have to start way back at the very beginning some 4 and A2 billion years ago our solar system began to emerge out of a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust This Cloud collapsed into a swirling disc of matter that got hotter and hotter and hotter until Hy hydrogen fused into helium and just like that our son was born and baby Earth was on its way too after the birth of our star all the matter on the farthest ends of the spinning disc began to Clump together these clumps would be the seedlings for the planets and moons in our solar system as they accumulated more matter they grew bigger and more spherical the clumps in the cool regions of the solar system were mostly made of ice liquids and gases closer to the Sun all the rocky material formed the inner planets like Mars and Earth this young Earth was incredibly active volcanically speaking it spewed out gases like hydrogen sulfide methane and carbon dioxide these gases made up the very first atmosphere on our planet early Earth was constantly bombarded by large asteroids and comets and soon Earth experienced an even more violent Collision Thea a planet the size of Mars slammed right into our Young World this epic Collision threw chunks of matter all around Earth's orbit and then gravity bound them together into what we know now as the [Music] Moon on this hot early Earth there were no oceans all water existed as gas but 3.8 billion years ago our planet cooled enough for water to condensate and become liquid the very first primitive ocean covered this young Earth and turned it into a water world H2O is an essential ingredient for creating living things so with all that water life appeared on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago these earliest forms of life were microscopic organisms but it was nearly a billion years after that that some of these organisms changed the course of the [Music] world Earth didn't stay as a water world very long soon the very first continents emerged from the ancient ocean scientists call them cratons as more and more land Rose from the ocean the very first supercontinent appeared on the planet valbar wasn't exactly a super continent it was pretty small scientists think it was smaller than the continent of [Music] Australia around 2.4 billion years ago cyanobacteria evolved to become our planet's first photosynthesizers finally we had some oxygen producers to make Earth's atmosphere much more hospitable and the rest is history folks just kidding we've still got a long way to go with all this new oxygen Earth's atmosphere had much lower levels of carbon dioxide and that made the planet icy cold much of our Young World froze over as Earth saw its first Ice Age now as Earth's atmosphere was changing the continents were moving too they broke up and reassembled into the next supercontinent rodinia rodinia was a real supercontinent it may have been the largest supercontinent to ever cover the planet and life well life finally became more comp complex but then something happened rodinia broke apart and a new supercontinent assembled this one was called pinosa then between about 540 and 485 million years ago there was an explosion of new life this time was called the Cambrian explosion and the animals that evolved during this period had heart hard body parts like shells or spines the most famous of all were the alien looking [Music] trilobites around 440 million years ago the climate suddenly shifted and the temperature of the ocean changed dramatically Earth saw its first mass extinction event this was the or division silurian Extinction and a majority of the the life that had been spreading around the planet vanished many of these life forms laid the foundation for the ecosystems that we have on Earth today somewhere between 420 to 350 million years ago the first trees arose from Earth's soil and the first animals made their way to land too 250 million years ago the planet was covered by Our Last vast supercontinent Pangia sadly it was also during this period that Earth witnessed the greatest mass extinction event in our history the great dying huge amounts of greenhouse gases and accelerated global warming wiped out about 90% of all species on Earth but this mass extinction helped pave the way for the next wave of animals to evolve 240 to 230 million years ago the first dinosaurs appeared for the next50 million years they'd rule the land if you were there you'd have witnessed the gigantic sorod Argentinosaurus the largest land animal ever or you might have been chased by one of the earth's greatest apex predators the T-Rex and you'd also witness Pangia breaking up and forming the continents we know today okay you may already know where this is headed 66 million years ago an asteroid slammed into our planet right where Mexico sits now and it coughed up so much debris into the atmosphere that it blocked out the sun this led to devastating climate changes that caused the dinosaurs to die out in the next wave of emerging animals mammals became more [Music] common around 6 million years ago the earliest known humans started walking this world this species was called sahelanthropus though they still likely walked on all fours 4 million years ago early humans began to walk upright and about 1 million years later they developed the first known two tools which they used to break things some 800,000 years ago things sparked these early humans discovered how to control fire and could now cook food and provide themselves with heat their brains continued to evolve now more rapidly than ever these humans learned to interact with each other and the surrounding World in whole new ways then between 40,000 to 15,000 years ago all other human species besides Homo sapiens went extinct 10,000 years ago Earth saw its earliest Farmers these previously nomadic humans stopped wandering the planet and finally put down their Roots jumping way forward to about 250 years ago the Industrial Revolution took place we went through major technological socioeconomic and cultural Transformations rural-based Farm societies became more industrialized Urban ones our human population continued to grow by 1804 we reached 1 billion by 1927 we'd hit 2 billion and since the 1960s the global population has risen faster and faster to where it is now at over 8 billion people what will humans look like in 10,000 years what about in 1 million years will we look like this guy n probably not but we'll definitely look different than we do now what parts of our body would evolve how long would evolving our bodies take and who would win the survival of the fittest this is what if and here's what would happen if if our bodies kept evolving it took roughly 6 million years for humans to become what we are today and modern humans have only been around for about 12,000 of those years even in that short period of time humans have evolved slightly we've become about 10 cm taller and now we can eat dairy foods after childhood so if those things can happen in 12,000 years where might we be hundreds of thousands of years into the future first we should probably figure out exactly what evolution is evolution is all about changes in the genetic makeup that happen to a species over time species with more advantageous traits will tend to have more offspring so those genetic traits will tend to carry on to later generations for example giraffes with longer necks who can reach more food will be able to survive better than giraffes with short necks and they'll be able to have more babies who will likely have longer necks just like their parents and as time goes on the short neck giraffes will die out and the long neck giraffes are the only ones left that's why all our giraffes today have long necks so how does this apply to humans exactly well evolution in this sense is actually very hard to predict in the world we live in we don't need need to worry about survival of the fittest technology has effectively canel a lot of that you no longer need to worry about being the fastest or the strongest this isn't 100,000 years ago when you had to fight for your food things like houses to live in and clean running water make surviving so much easier you never think to yourself how am I going to survive today but that's something our ancestors had to worry about constantly it's not guarant guaranteed that 1 million years from now humans will be stronger faster and bigger than ever before after all having children today is generally decided by culture and personal choice rather than the need for our species to survive our future will be decided by the traits of people who have children and how many children they have if people who are naturally overweight and have health problems are the only ones having kids over the next million years then that's how the human race will end up but we might not need to worry about any of these natural occurrences instead we could become completely fused with technology before any of this happens cybernetic arms brain chips and laser eyes could all become possibilities not only that but we also might be able to alter a baby's genes before they're born completely getting rid of evolution altogether this would allow us to get rid of diseases and any other genetic traits that might harm us but if we didn't have this luxury and we had to evolve the old-fashioned way there's a few things that might happen we just need to look at how modern humans have evolved in the past 12,000 years we know we've been getting taller most likely due to nutrition and that our brains have been getting smaller but don't worry we haven't been getting Dumber our brains are actually becoming more efficient so in a million years we might be incredibly tall humans with tiny heads does that remind you of anything at the end of the day human evolution is incredibly difficult to predict that's because evolution is primarily based on our environment and who knows what might happen to the Earth in the next million years we might need to evolve to survive fires as the planet will become so incredibly hot I so hope I'm not around for that if you traveled 250 million years into the past you'd be witnessing the dawn of Dinosaurs one of the leading theories is that dinosaurs evolved from a species known as archosaurs these were the dominant reptiles that appeared during the late perian period to some they may even look like dinosaurs and that's because they were ancestors to to these incredible creatures over time the archosaurs split up into two groups one of these groups led to crocodiles and the other led to dinosaurs which continued evolving into thousands of different species one of the main traits they eventually gained was their bipedal abilities early dinosaurs began to walk on two legs freeing their front limbs for other uses like grabbing food and defending themselves and that that's just the start of their evolutionary Journey let's travel back in time 250 million years ago and witness the history of dinosaurs in 10 minutes Triassic period as you enter this new era you'll notice that the dinosaurs running around look pretty different from what you're used to seeing one of the earliest dinosaurs that emerged from the archosaurs was the Eoraptor this little guy was about the size of a dog barely 1 M tall and weighing in at a meager 10 kg you know we typically think of dinosaurs as these massive creatures but it' be a couple million more years before that started to happen we'll check in to see how those dinos are growing in size as we travel through time but for now let's see what's happening to Earth during the Triassic period the supercontinent Pangia starts to fragment slowly altering Global climates and ecosystems the climate was generally hot and dry and there were no polar ice caps creating a stark contrast to what you're typically used to in modern-day Earth the vegetation was also very different and was crucial for the survival and evolution of dinosaurs the plants have different characteristics as well some are tough some nutritious and others potentially poisonous each one of them will influence the dietary and adaptive strategies of different dinosaur species speaking of of which what are some other dinosaurs doing during this time weighing in at about 23 kg and 1 M tall we have the celop fisis it was a little bit bigger than the Eoraptor but that didn't stop it from being a fast and agile Predator that likely prayed on smaller animals now the herrerasaurus was slightly taller at about 1.1 M but was a lot heavier at about 350 kg then we have the plateosaurus now this sky is way bigger than me it stood tall at about 3 m and weighed up to 4,000 kgrs this was one of the earliest examples of how big dinosaurs could grow but wait they get even bigger than this despite their impressive forms dinosaurs weren't the dominant creatures during the Triassic they had to share their environments with many other organisms all vying for survival in the diverse ecosystems this was the case until the Triassic period would experience a great Extinction event this was likely caused by Massive volcanic activity climate change and potentially even some small asteroid impacts this will have a significant effect on life on Earth and lead to the extinction of numerous species but it wasn't all bad especially for our dinosaurs this moment set the stage to bring new opportunities to these species leading to them dominating the Earth Jurassic Period now instead of dinosaurs simply surviving this is where they Thrive over the millions of years different species have been evolving and dinosaurs are now the rulers of the earth they spread across continents dominating the Lush forests and arid deserts occupying these areas were some massive dinosaurs ones that you're probably a lot more familiar with we have the stegosaurus brachiosaurus and Allosaurus these were some of the largest creatures ever to walk the earth but you'd quickly notice that it wasn't just these massive beasts that were roaming around this era also saw the evolution of theropods these were smaller dinosaurs that had more of a bird-like form one of the most famous was the archaeopteris it was kind of like a mix between a dinosaur and a bird with feathers and wings but also with bony teeth and a tail the archaeopteris was a crucial link between birds and dinosaurs if you wait about 100 million more years they'll evolve into the birds we know today oh wait is that a spoiler after 56 million years the Jurassic period comes to an end this was after yet another Extinction event happened luckily this one is more minor however due to climate change volcanic activity and sea levels changing some species are going extinct this once again changes the landscape as the dinosaurs enter their final era Cretaceous Period okay we've now entered the Cretaceous Period and as we've been traveling through these millions of years you may have noticed something's missing right one of the dinosaurs big Stars hasn't appeared yet say hello to the Tyrannosaurus Rex the T-Rex was a massive Beast it was 3.7 M tall and 12 M long not only that but it was a whopping 9 tons equipped with a powerful jaw and Incredibly sharp teeth the T-Rex dominated the Cretaceous Kingdom it was one of the most dominant Predators history has ever seen this colossal Beast wasn't just Scavenging leftovers it was an active Hunter stalking its prey with Keen eyesight and a heightened sense of smell among its favorite meals were the sizable herbivores like the Edmontosaurus but the T-Rex didn't stop there it would take on formidable opponents like the Triceratops and even other smaller theropods if the opportunity arose with its powerful jaws filled with 12in teeth and its strong hind limbs that allowed it to run at speeds of up to 40 kmph the T rex was a master of the hunt but this period wasn't just filled with massive beasts like the T-Rex look around and you'll also notice even more feathered dinosaurs in the Cretaceous Period one of them being the Velociraptor now you typically see them portrayed like this with no feathers but evidence suggests that these creatures were quite feathered now the feathers weren't necessarily used for flying more for warmth and stability and this one is the micro Raptor now unlike the Velociraptor its feathers likely were used for flight giving us crucial insight into the evolution of birds okay as I mentioned earlier Pangia was breaking up and forming into the continents we know today but because of this some dinosaurs were forced to migrate and separate into different areas of the world these dinosaurs had to adapt to their new environments potentially changing the course of their evolution but none of this matters when we consider what happens next the cataclysmic event okay as you've been hanging out with the dinosaurs for millions of years an asteroid has been making its way toward Earth then suddenly it hits creating a massive crater 150 km wide and 20 km deep naturally something this huge makes a devastating impact on the world one that'll change it forever the asteroid's Collision is massive but its impact is felt long after the initial crash due to the massive Collision the environment drastically changes significant drops in temperature start to occur and debris from the crash begins to block out the sun this impacts not only the dinosaurs Health but also their food supply this devastating event wipes out 75% of the Earth's species many of which are the dinosaurs we've been observing this whole time but don't worry not all of the dinosaurs went extinct the aviation-based dinosaurs we checked out earlier managed to survive the asteroid strike eventually evolving into Birds aftermath now that most of the dinosaurs are EX inct it's cleared the way for mammals to diversify and expand their impact on the world with less competition early mammals can now Thrive and take over which slowly over time allowed humans to evolve building the world we know today humans have been evolving for the past 6 million years but but something's gone terribly wrong and now we're evolving backward once this process began how long would it take for you to become an ape again what does climate have to do with it and why would Society completely collapse this is what if and here's what would happen if humans evolved backward award thanks to Evolution Humanity dominates Earth but how did that happen well first don't think of evolution as a straight and narrow path Evolution happens through the process of natural selection over millions of years organisms adapt to their environments by developing the traits needed to keep them alive the life forms that don't adapt die Evolution doesn't have an end goal for you it's a NeverEnding process of survival so if you started devolving today how soon would Humanity perish your journey through Devolution would eventually take you into the microscopic realm it should take billions of years for you to get there but for the sake of our scenario we're going to speed this process up like way up like let's say you raced through the backward Evolution at the speed of 1 million years in one day well before you shrunk out of sight your body would stretch to new heights well that's good news for my short Kings out there in just 1 hour you would grow to around 1.8 m tall your jaw and teeth would also expand and your brain size would increase massively yeah that melon of yours is getting huge you just devolved back into Homo erectus Humanity's long extinct cousin and these changes would have major consequences on your life another 2 minutes and you'd lose brain capacity you'd forget how to hunt or Farm from now on your diet would be limited you'd eat whatever you could find in the wild or you could make a trip to the grocery store while they still exist but you certainly wouldn't be smart enough to understand how to pay clothes would be a thing of the past now you'd be letting everything hang free you'd forget everything you wouldn't know how to bury the dead or how to create art you'd be naked hungry kind of dumb and a little uglier the good news well no one would tell you after about 4 hours into this experiment well you'd lose the ability to talk and as you grunted your way through life society around you would start to crumble yeah in the next 2 and 1/2 days cities would become abandoned ruins of a Time forgotten instead of living in these buildings you'd prefer roughing it in Huts now you would devolve into Homo habilis eating leaves plants and whatever animal you could catch with your diminished brain capacity you wouldn't be able to use stone tools anymore and a warm fire would be a rare luxury after 6 days you'd devolve back into a chimp you'd be living off The Spoils of the Jungle eating seeds nuts and insects over the next couple of months wild primates would rain on Earth again okay after 6 months of your Devolution the lines between species would blur now you would live among the monot mammals that lay eggs like the Platypus yeah you'd be hatched into this new world after one year you'd be wallowing in freshwater habitats with the the other tetr pods and if that sounds refreshing well just wait in one more year you'd live it up as a starfish or a wormlike creature floating in the ocean without care the once great species known as humans would returned to a single celled bacteria 10 years into this wild experiment all of human history your knowledge and experiences would be gone and you would be reduced to a tiny Speck so once you're back in this simple State could you evolve back into a human again yeah well probably not we humans evolved this way thanks to a lot of luck and specific circumstances it all depends on the new conditions on our planet you could develop blue skin like the navi or even become bioluminescent wow uh maybe you would just be a pile of slime who knows listen Devolution is a fun Theory but it's unlikely to happen like this the situations that made your ancestors Branch out from other species don't exist to make this process happen in exact reverse order it's not like pressing rewind our universe was born bil millions of years ago and since that time it's given birth to millions of galaxies our solar system and who knows what else our universe has been evolving for 13.8 billion years but how exactly did we get here well strap in because today we're going back in time to explore the history of the universe in 10 minutes in in the beginning there was nothing then suddenly the Big Bang happened and created our universe yeah okay maybe it's a little more complicated than that how this Cosmic event began is largely a mystery but once it got started it never stopped within milliseconds particles like quarks and photons are formed they're just some of the building blocks that make up the world you know today a couple of minutes later more elements were born protons and neutrons combined to create elements like helium and dyum and for the next 400 million years the universe will continue to rapidly [Music] expand after hundreds of millions of years of chaos and Rapid expansion things slow down a bit this will begin the formation of the first structures of our universe think of these structures as the ingredients that make up our Stars galaxies and even planets like Earth next we see the formation of primordial gas clouds made up of helium and hydrogen two of the elements that were created earlier these gas clouds have been pulled together over millions of years through the force of gravity once they came together over millions of more years they slowly got denser and denser but let's speed this [Music] up as our gas clouds are getting closer and denser they're also getting hotter once the center of one of these clouds reaches 10 million de Kelvin it'll suddenly ignite creating a process known as nuclear fusion the hydrogen atoms will combine to form helium releasing an incredible amount of energy suddenly the first star in our universe is born but this isn't the only one Within These cosmic clouds billions of stars are now being created and these aren't just shiny balls of light they're going to play an integral part in shaping our universe and not all these stars are identical as they're born they'll form into different shapes and sizes some will be massive blue giants While others will be smaller red dwarfs and it's not just their size that's different stars have different lifespans too some live for tens of millions of years While others live for trillions and as we've been observing these Stars something fascinating has been happening these Stars don't like to chill in Space by themselves they want to group together and it just so happens that when these Stars along with other particles like gas dark dark matter and dust grouped together due to gravitational forces they form galaxies yeah galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda were formed in this way but that won't be for a couple more billion years over hundreds of millions of years the universe continued to expand more galaxies formed and they began to evolve in fascinating ways in a common theme we've been seeing throughout our travels the galaxies started to gravitate toward each other as these galaxies begin to pull together they create Galaxy clusters these are the largest gravitational structures we know of at this time we're also seeing some of the stars that formed near the beginning of the universe starting to die out they're exploding into supernovas but don't be sad that they're dying these supernovas are a necessary sacrifice to provide the universe with essential elements that will later create planets and life speaking of essential elements I should also mention Dark Matter this is a mysterious substance that doesn't emit or absorb any light and plays a pivotal role in the tapestry of the universe even though we can't see dark matter we know that it has a strong pole that has helped shape everything up until now dark matter is like a hidden framework that's helped form our galaxy clusters and other elements of the [Music] universe okay now is when things get a little more familiar after several smaller galaxies come together the Milky Way begins to form our sister Galaxy the androma Galaxy is also created during this time and in other similar galaxies so solar systems are starting to be created enormous clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity bonding together and creating early planets and solar systems and it only gets more interesting from here okay we've been away for a couple billion years and during that time the universe has continued to expand more solar systems and galaxies are formed and way more stars have been created well speaking of stars arguably the most important star in all of space was born our son after our sun is born extra gas and dust surround it over time these particles Clump together eventually growing larger and larger this process is called planetesimals the beginning of the planets we know today in our solar system over time these planetesimals grow larger and larger through countless collisions and gravitational attractions one of these protoplanets that's emerging is Earth its growth is marked by a pivotal event a Mars sized body known as Thea crashes into our planetesimal which creates what we now call Earth and our moon similar collisions of celestial bodies create the other rocky planets we know today mer Mercury Venus and Mars over in the cooler regions of space further away from the Sun gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn are forming but checking back in on our rocky planets they look significantly different than they do in the present day they're a lot smoother than I remember well just wait a couple more million years for what's known as the late heavy bombardment to occur this Cosmic event saw massive asteroids hit these rocky planets it played a huge role in how they're shaped today okay after billions and billions of years we finally start to see life appear in our universe but don't get too excited these are simple single celled organisms known as procaryotes they lack many of the essential features for today but are still an important part of our Evolution you currently have trillions of them living on your body not long after this oxygen begins to appear on Earth and so do multicell organisms earth's climate is beginning to take shape and we see the introduction of the ozone layer which protects life from harmful radiation from space okay another couple billion years have passed and a lot has happened happened the organisms that were microscopic have evolved to become creatures with vertebrae this is a significant Milestone and a precursor to all other vertebrate life on Earth including you and even more change happens during this time plants are evolving and continents are moving this is the age of reptiles and Pangia but it also had its shortcomings a mass extinction event occurs wiping out a vast majority of the species that have been so patiently evolving this sets the stage for dinosaurs and mammals to emerge and as this era comes to a close Pangia begins to fragment laying the groundwork for our modern continents and now we're here I love you like la la la la la la la la la la I love you like la la la la about 50,000 years ago we shared this planet with different hominids called the neandertals their species wasn't human but they weren't far from it either no longer walking Among Us these early cousins of humans died out long ago but not before they had a chance to uh get intimate with some of our ancestors if you were to mate with a neander today what would your children look like would your relationship stay monogamous and how much money would you spend on a date this is what if and here's what would happen if you made it with a neander with their protruding brows and large MERS a neander may not be the most attractive partner available but considering that 20% of neandertal DNA is found in humans across the globe they might have had a little something going on after all our bodies are entirely compatible and these primitive features might trigger something Primal in you and while you might have a wild night out would you be able to speak the same language let's clear a few important things up humans did not evolve from neandertals our species and theirs came from a common ancestor over a half million years ago then like two branches on the same tree we both went our separate ways neandertals roamed Eurasia while humans were starting to migrate Out of Africa but due to inbreeding and smaller population size size the neander TS slowly faded out of existence and if they were still around today our Jean Pool might look wildly different but before you start painting the nursery let's start talking about your matches again you may not find neander TS uh conventionally attractive but they weren't the lumbering oos from our imaginations our primitive cousins were adept at hunting and killed large animals at close range they made many tools and even created jewelry these strong and fierce hominids would be able to protect you bring home dinner and even make you an anniversary gift but you'd want to Dy in more often especially when you consider that neander TS would eat 700 calories more than humans per day they might be primitive but they wouldn't be a cheap date also considering that neander calls often ate the contents inside their prey's stomach their table manners might be a little bit messy but even then there might be an attraction you couldn't deny so what would attract you to in the anderol most of our human desires are ruled by the specific mate recognition system this means you're attracted to individuals you feel comfortable with so anyone who triggers the right anatomical behav Behavioral or chemical cues in you could cause an intense attraction but hey you like whoever you like unfortunately for you though a relationship with a neander wouldn't be exclusive neandertals lived in small communities and inbreeding was a common practice so your potential in-laws would all be fierce competition for your partner's affection our skin and hair still contain genes from neander tall's surviving genomes while your children would have a full head of hair they could suffer from blood clots and be more at risk for catching communicable diseases like covid-19 and depending on your partner your hybrid Offspring might have trouble reproducing mating between human females and male neander tals would be less likely to produce fertile children neandertals were known for their broad noses and protruding brows based on fossils found from these human neandertal pairings your kids might not inherit those features but they could have massive molers a large bone behind their ear or frontal face flattening Flathead syndrome isn't lethal for infants but it can be costly to correct involving physical therapy or expensive corrective helmet hel humans mating with neander tals didn't keep their species going but their legacy lives on in our DNA wait a minute neanderthals are extinct before you laugh check yourself Neanderthal DNA is 99.7% identical to our own and researchers claim that some humans might be carrying as much as 2% of the Neanderthal genome making things even weirder is that scientists recently recovered a nearly complete DNA sequence from a 50,000-year old Neanderthal skeleton so in theory neanderthals could make a comeback but how would they adapt and how long would they survive this is what if and here's what would happen if neanderthals hadn't gone extinct despite their physical differences like being shorter and having longer skulls we might have more in common with neanderthals than we'd like to admit first of all their brains were bigger which doesn't make them smarter than us but they could communicate with one another they settled in family communities and took care of the sick and the elderly they also crafted sophisticated tools which would have been used for anything from hunting to possibly ship building they even cook their vegetables and ate them which is more than you can say so if neanderthals are simply the beta version of what humans became could they still live among us neanderthals in fact did live among us for about 5,000 years Homo sapiens and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe and likely interbred this would explain why most eurasians probably have at least 1% of the Neanderthal DNA in their genome while anyone of African descent doesn't have any Neanderthal DNA since their ancestors didn't migrate through Eurasia but with the homo sapien population significantly outnumbering the Neanderthal population it's likely that modern humans simply absorbed the Neanderthal species another theory is that we outc competed them for resources during the last ice age resulting in their Extinction But whichever theory is right what if the concluding fact was wrong what if neanderthals were not extinct if neanderthals somehow evolved as a separate but very similar species to humans how would they fare despite their communication and craftsmanship abilities the laws of natural selection prove that homo sapiens are superior which means the survival options for neanderthals wouldn't be that great barring the likelihood of early modern humans breeding them out of existence neanderthals probably would have become something like second class citizens would we enslave them keep them in zoos or force them to fight it's hard to say with the limits of their intelligence prevent them from fully integrating into modern society or would they learn and evolve just like Homo sapiens maybe they'd want nothing to do with us realizing how our differences outweigh our similarities could we expect neanderthals to establish their own communities and continue to exist independently of the developing world it's hard to predict exactly how a species that went extinct about 40,000 years ago would behave today but then again maybe we just have to look around us neanderthals may be extinct but we did evolve alongside them and some of us inherited more than others so think twice before you call someone a neanderthal it can be quite offensive 1,000 years into the future humans might look like this this is Mindy a model that shows what we humans might look like in the year 3000 equipped with a hunched over back Claws and a smaller brain Mindy has adapted this way primarily due to technology and cell phones but this is just a start of a potential evolutionary journey of the human body Let's Travel 1 million years into the future to see the even crazier ways our bodies will evolve super strength giant eyes and edited jeans are all things you might see later in this episode but why are we getting all these traits anyway well more on that in a second but for now let's check in and see what the next phase of evolution is for humans 5,000 years into the future okay we're now several thousand years into the the future and in many ways humans would look relatively similar to how we do now yeah if we look 5,000 years into the past from where we are today well humans look basically the same the main differences are that well we're now healthier taller and stronger this is primarily due to how our diet health care and lifestyle have changed throughout the centuries this is speculation but you can assume that a lot will have happened 5,000 years into the future changes that include space travel and massive advancements in technology and Ai and how we look all depends on where humans decide to live in the future if Humanity becomes an Interstellar civilization well we might look like this and if we stay on Earth and go all in on AI well humans might look more like this so we'll explore a couple of options as we move through the years the generations of humans who decide to go to Mars will notice the most significant changes Mars's lower gravity would lead to less bone density and muscle mass but the change in gravity might also lead to increased height and longer Limbs and there'll be a lot more changes coming up but for now let's take another jump into the future and check on some other options for human evolution 25,000 years into the future it's safe to say that technology will play a heavy role in how humans evolve traveling 25,000 years into the future well you might decide to have a designer baby instead of creating life naturally and leaving so many things to chance you would select various traits for who you want your baby to be you could choose physical characteristics of like hair and eye color and much more essential features like the ability to avoid certain diseases and allergies in a way this is already happening today but in the future it'll be more advanced and accessible it's also likely that humans will begin to fuse with technology becoming cyborg like beings think neural links robot Limbs and sensory enhancements imagine having a chip in your brain that's equipped with an AI that provides you with any answer you need humans will have all these cybernetic enhancements that will make them smarter stronger and able to live longer 100,000 years into the future one of the ways which we can see how much humans have evolved is by looking at our faces and heads as you see here in 100,000 years our eyes and heads will be significantly larger this will will be due to multiple reasons one of them being that we'll be living in different environments like space our larger eyes will allow us to see better in low light environments it'll also help protect our eyes from the cosmic rays found in space on Mars along with bones becoming less dense and limbs continuing to get longer residents there will need to develop some new survival traits to last this long as Humanity has developed on Mars over the Generations well they've been experiencing tons of radiation in their environment that's thanks to the lack of an atmosphere on the red planet over time humanity there has slowly adapted to this new way of life but the radiation levels are so harsh that they likely haven't adapted enough to live comfortably one of the problems with evolution is that it's incredibly slow seeing significant change in our bodies can take millions of years so to fix that we'll need to make some changes ourselves you'll see what I mean as we continue on to our 1 million year mark 250,000 years into the future yeah Humanity was tired of waiting and waiting for changes in evolution to happen so they've decided to do it themselves we've been altering our bodies with technology for hundreds of thousands of years at this point but now we're going to take it to another level yeah instead of adding some sort of enhancement to our bodies well we'll now alter our DNA with Advanced genetic manipulation scientists are already experimenting with this technology but 250,000 years from now well you can bet the science will be Advanced beyond belief scientists will be able to alter edit and even add different genetic mutations both before people are born and after in the case of our Colony on Mars well people on that planet could alter their genes so that the radiation isn't as harmful to their bodies and that's just the start eventually we'll alter our genes to produce all sorts of insane attributes you could be brilliant have super strength or be immune to every disease as Humanity unlocks this new era of human evolution things are about to get even better by the way are you wondering where we've been getting all these crazy video ideas lately well they come from our patreon we've got an exclusive Discord where members get front-of-the-line access to talk about the what if ideas they want made sign up and maybe we'll create your next idea 500,000 years into the future okay it's been another 250,000 years Humanity has been playing around with this Gene editing thing and it's gotten pretty ridiculous scientists have managed to combine parts of lizard dna with our human DNA this has allowed us to regrow our Limbs and grow new organs if we need them also along with the help of technology and Gene editing humans are more intelligent than ever we can now naturally have any appearance we want this might sound kind of scary but Gene editing like this will likely be essential for us to survive in new environments like space and our evolving Earth 1 million years into the future so remember the humans back on Earth the ones who were adding tons of cybernetic enhancements to their bodies yeah they've continued to do that along with tons of Gene editing and the people in space have been doing the same thing but as we've been progressing through these 1 million years well the environments on Earth and Mars have been very different and because of these different environments the humans living on these planets would have different needs and desires for the types of bodies they want remember evolution is all about lifestyle and environment that's why Mindy at the start looked the way she did it's possible that the humans living on these two planets would be so different that they'd essentially be two completely separate species sort of like 50,000 years ago when there were humans on Earth at the same time as neandertals but regardless of how they're different it's likely that both types of future humans will be the most advanced species ever seen we'll live longer maybe forever be smarter than ever and be ready to to take on whatever challenges the future holds all good things must come to an end sadly Homo sapiens time on Earth is no exception and someone would surely take our place as the dominant species but who or rather what how could genetic engineering spell out the end for our species what would distinguish the next homo species from us and could the world's next dominant species not be human at all this is what if and here's what would happen if Homo sapiens went extinct some of the earliest species of humans date back at least 7 million years back then different humanoid species belonging to the huminity family walked amongst each other they evolved interbred and way more often than not died out our species Homo sapiens arrived on the scene about 6 million years ago but it wasn't until some point in the last 15,000 to 40,000 years that we emerged as the only living species of humans and not long after that we had settled on every continent except for Antarctica our social Innovation and Tool creation are some of the factors you could thank for this these skills allowed us to out compete other species like neandertals and this Innovative nature could be what leads to our very own demise when we create a new superhuman species that could outlive us all according to the author Don simborg our successors or homo Nuvo would look more or less just like you the big difference these humanoids would be more like a highly engineered version homon nuuvo would be created through the selective editing of our genes their genes could be manipulated so that they grow taller age slower or no longer contract certain diseases and should these new humans not interbreed with us they could be on their own distinct evolutionary path thanks to Natural Selection they could start looking and acting differently from us Homo sapiens now while this could sound like something out of a sci-fi film it could be closer than you think it took modern humans about 200,000 years to evolve from our morar aric predecessors but homo Nuvo could come into existence in a matter of decades this could be largely thanks to crisper and no that's not the hottest new kitchen appliance it's an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats in other words genetic editing using this method you could add remove or alter particular locations in an organism's DNA you could use it to prevent and treat diseases by making edits to somatic cells in your body these changes you make to your own genome couldn't be passed on to your children but should you start tinkering with the genetic sequences of your eggs or sperm cells you could be laying out the red carpet for our successor species next gen crisper created humans could have genetically modified Heights and muscle masses to go along with their customized skin hair and eye colors and over time there could be an intersection of both natural and unnatural selection desirable traits could emerge as dominant ones these new humans could digest food differently be less prone to disease and be better adapted to the effects of climate change they could withstand more extreme temperatures be less reliant on nutrients and water or be more resilient to radiation this would be a particularly huge Advantage should interplanetary space travel be common in the future but things wouldn't necessarily be all peaches and sunshine for this future species dangers and unexpected challenges could present themselves when we play such a Godlike role in our own evolutionary path editing just one gene in a single individual with the hope of achieving a specific result could have far-reaching unintended consequences and these consequences could then be inherited by this person's children and their children's children now while it may sound fun to manipulate our physiological characteristics it wouldn't be so simple to engineer humans to be more intelligent there are thousands of genes linked to your IQ and they rely on many complex interactions messing around with these genes could have disastrous outcomes imagine more and more humans suffering from behavioral conditions like Tourette Syndrome or attention deficit disorder whether on purpose or accidental these could be encoded by only a few genes and since these are hereditary they could be passed on but then again as Gene editing advances you could also see these disorders eliminated entirely these homon nuuvo could also combine their genetically modified traits with cyborg Technologies they could retrieve information at lightning speed enhance their Vision with infrared to see at night or become super soldiers by hooking themselves up directly to machines like fighter jets competing with homon Nuvo for survival would be an increasingly difficult situation for us mere humans and eventually it could be the end of us of course there's always the chance that a nonhuman entity could surpass us before they do like artificial super intelligence but that's a story for another what if in the past few billion years Earth has been pummeled by asteroids crashed into other planets and frozen over several times not to mention being ruled by

Channel: What If

Views: 112,493

Keywords: what if, earth, hypothetical scenario, free documentary, david attenborough, Exoplanets, science channel, science TV, TV show, live stream, space, space documentary, astrobiology, interstellar, many worlds, space discovery, science, educational, exploration, biology, science and education, solar system, conspiracy, facts, planets, science fiction, asteroid, dna, evolution, venus, mars, space time, cosmos, planet, documentary, best of, what if scenario, human evolution, humans, aliens

Id: 6l53l7FPOsE

Length: 65min 15sec (3915 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2024