A Brief History of Life: Survival Is Hard

It turns out life may have gotten its start pretty early in Earth's history, and while the first couple billion years saw several important developments, the period was still dominated by very simple life forms. This is our first installment in a four-part series on the history of life!

For A Brief History of Life

Hosted by: Michael Aranda
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[jMcWill]

I swear this guy always looks like a sims character

[GBart]

You mean Part 1: The Spaghetti Monster says "Let there be Sauce"

[TheJakestrong]

mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell

[BathroomTile]

This stuff is fascinating. I particularly liked the explanation for the mitochondria, and the realization that early life is simply a matter of the natural interactions of molecules automatically arranging themselves into progressively more complex forms. It's like the 1's and 0's in a computer being able to generate a photo-realistic video game, really.

[Nenkos]

Last time I was this early, Hadean rocks still existed.

[shannonmanning]

This is by far my favorite episode of SciShow, and I've been watching for years. Thanks guys; well done.

[imageeknotanerd]

Y'know, I think it needs to be explicitly stated that Michael is a really good host for this show. Seriously Michael, you're great at what you do. :)

[mattforbes]

But life would never change the climate so much that it destroys it self... come on.. thats crazy....

[a.f.]

Everyone looking for imaginary creationists in the comments and faking to eat popcorn to feel superior.

Anyway this was pretty interesting and well explained, the fact that something as big as a planet can be easly messed up by something so little is mindblowing.

[JakeBroe]

This series is some of your best SciShow! I love it!

[gmdille]

Really loving this long-form content! Really really fantastically done, kudos to the whole Scishow team

[Sanngot]

I remember back when I was in first year of university about 7 years ago. When the Snowball Earth theory was still a new concept. I watched a documentary and asked my professor about it the next class. He told me that he didn't include it in his lesson because of how new it was and personally wasn't buying into it. I mentioned the documentary to him because he asked where I heard it from.

The next class, he addressed it at the beginning of the lecture. I dunno, I just feel a little bit of pride to this day that I might have contributed this miniscule amount to helping spread awareness of Snowball Earth. :)

[SBroproductions]

This video is a lie. We all came from Arceus, the original one, who was born from a single Egg in an ocean of chaos.

[korodyj]

It's almost as if Michael's videos are created after he reads my mind and finds out what I've been studying up on most recently

[spazmaster]

I've always found symbiosis really fascinating... like how the hell does it even end up happening!?

[LightningSeen]

Life is so amazing. No not the daily routine we do but the struggles at the microscopic level. It's like tiers. When single celled organisms worked together, the miracle created us. It makes me believe that someday if we all work together (and i mean REALLY work together) we could probably make greater miracles. When would that be I wonder.

[Vynzent]

So many whining about creationists, but where are the creationists?

[shrobonaguha]

This miniseries has come at the most appropriate time. Studying the evolution of life at college now! This really helps visualise what is being taught in class.

[DavidTurnell]

This is the best video on early life development I´ve seen. Well done!

[krymsynrayne]

+SciShow, thanks for making educational videos that my whole family actually likes watching! You guys are AWESOME!