There's No Single Cradle of Humankind

It would take decades for paleontologists to realize that maybe there wasn’t just one so-called "cradle of humankind," and realize that maybe they’d been asking the wrong question all along.

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References:

[kenrickman]

“It’s complicated.”
Describes family dynamics at every level, apparently.

[AngryKittens]

"ew just dinosaurs" - snooty anthropologists

[DarthChewie]

Where did we come from?
Where did we go?
Where did we come from?
Cotton Eye Joe.

[aplaceinthestars]

This is the sort of content that is great for the layperson who's been out of formal school for enough years and misses out on the current scientific consensus, especially when the last 5-10 years has had significant breakthroughs with DNA technology.

[lavioliberty]

In 2022, Japan's national museum of science in Ueno held a special exhibition on this exact topic which was amazing. From the failure in finding the origin of homosapien to their excellently successful collection of dinosaur fossils.

[dorongrossman-naples]

I love that you guys include the historical background for these discoveries. It really helps contextualize them.

[chromothor]

The bottleneck that happens when a subset of a population migrates to a new habitat is more specifically called "founder effect" while what you might call a "classical bottleneck" happens due to population shrinkage like in cheetahs

[golden_smaug]

Lucy's distant cousins were estranged and didn't want to be found

[BlueTyphoon]

I know I shouldn't giggle about it, but forgive me. The artists who make the CG renders of ancient hominids always go out of their way to censor their groins each and every time. it's just really funny to me to imagine them walking around and hunting always making sure to cover themselves from the perspective of any would-be viewers.

[aidanb.c.]

I wrote my Master's thesis on the initial human settlement of Australia and its implications for the Multiregional and Out-of-Africa models. This video feels very familiar. That could also be because I taught Intro to Human Evolution at a community college for 15 years lol.

[colinmorris]

The cradle of mankind needs renaming “the classroom of mankind”

[VTA-SNPCA-x]

When she called the dinosaur find "failure", I have heard it in Steven He's voice, loud and reverberating. 😂
I don't know if my brains instant association is cool or disturbing.

[iron]

There is something humbling about watching these videos. It really puts into perspective how all of our ancestors have not been struggling for better lives for decades or centuries but rather millions of years.

[apestrong]

The bottleneck of genes leaving Africa is really fascinating! Gives a whole new perspective on the diversity of life

[lhurst]

It was not linear, nor a tree, but more of a bush. Many, many starts and stops and mixing.

[Gildedmuse]

6:20 Love this shot showing just how big Africa is. Maps dont always capture just how big many places are.

[lightbeingform]

'braided stream' is a very nice turn of phrase, i heartily approve

[chemquests]

This year is the 50th anniversary of discovering Lucy!

[jiiyl]

It is easy to fall into the belief that humans evolved in places that were favorable to perserving bones and relics. They could have spent millenia along the coastlines before sea levels rose.

[Shantosh]

Pls do an episode on India when it was an island during the mesozoic after breaking off from Gondwana.