science

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

benmunoz
September 8, 2019
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THREE MAJOR HUMAN REVOLUTIONS

  1. The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
  2. The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture). The unification of humankind (the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
  3. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1500 CE, the emergence of objective science).

# YEARS AGO

  • 13.5 billion: Matter and energy appear. Beginning of physics. Atoms and molecules appear. Beginning of chemistry.
  • 4.5 billion: Formation of planet Earth.
  • 3.8 billion: Emergence of organisms. Beginning of biology.
  • 6 million: Last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees.
  • 2.5 million: Evolution of the genus Homo in Africa. First stone tools.
  • 2 million: Humans spread from Africa to Eurasia. Evolution of different human species.
  • 500,000: Neanderthals evolve in Europe and the Middle East.
  • 300,000: Daily usage of fire.
  • 200,000: Homo sapiens evolves in East Africa.
  • 70,000: The Cognitive Revolution. Emergence of fictive language. Beginning of history. Sapiens spread out of Africa.
  • 45,000: Sapiens settle Australia. Extinction of Australian megafauna. 30,000: Extinction of Neanderthals.
  • 16,000: Sapiens settle America. Extinction of American megafauna. 13,000: Extinction of Homo floresiensis. Homo sapiens the only surviving human species.
  • 12,000: The Agricultural Revolution. Domestication of plants and animals. Permanent settlements.
  • 5,000: First kingdoms, script and money. Polytheistic religions.
  • 4,250: First empire – the Akkadian Empire of Sargon.
  • 2,500: Invention of coinage – a universal money. The Persian Empire – a universal political order ‘for the benefit of all humans’. Buddhism in India – a universal truth ‘to liberate all beings from suffering’.
  • 2,000: Han Empire in China. Roman Empire in the Mediterranean. Christianity.
  • 1,400: Islam.
  • 500: The Scientific Revolution. Humankind admits its ignorance and begins to acquire unprecedented power. Europeans begin to conquer America and the oceans. The entire planet becomes a single historical arena. The rise of capitalism.
  • 200: The Industrial Revolution. Family and community are replaced by state and market. Massive extinction of plants and animals.
  • 0 (The Present): Humans transcend the boundaries of planet Earth. Nuclear weapons threaten the survival of humankind. Organisms are increasingly shaped by intelligent design rather than natural selection.
  • The Future: Intelligent design becomes the basic principle of life? Homo sapiens is replaced by superhumans?

Source: https://erenow.net/common/sapiensbriefhistory/1.php

Cosmos with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

benmunoz
January 31, 2016
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Just finished watching Cosmos on Netflix.  Amazing work!  Had to post this final monologue by Carl Sagan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

–Carl Sagan