A Very Very Fast History of the HUMAN World

A while back : the arrival.

Humans show up on Earth. Forget the particulars. Just know that one day we weren’t here, and the next we were. Scientists like to call this version of humans Homo erectus. They call the next version (the version we call ourselves now) Homo sapiens.

The main difference is that apparently this version (sapiens) is smarter and wiser than the first one (erectus). Definitely smarter. Wiser? Not sure.

We made tools and lived scattered, separate lives. Eventually we figured out stuff like fire, speech, art, and how to mostly not get killed by other animals.

9000s - 4000s BC (Stone Age farm life).

Eventually humans figured out how to grow crops. This meant we could live closer together, keep each other safe, have a little bit of free time to pursue other skills, and develop some culture.

So there’s houses, specialized trades, and increased opportunity invent and innovate.

Of course with success, things get bigger and more complicated. Power struggles broke out and rulers began to seize and consolidate power. Different categories and hierarchies of peoples began to develop. The idea of private property and ownership becomes important, and along with that, the desire to get more for yourself and keep more away from others.

Rich rulers pass their wealth and power on down the line and keep it consolidated.

Ideas about religion, worship, the supernatural, and deities in general began to unify and divide people. Some build giant monuments and buildings to these deities.

3000s BC (Stone Age progress transition to writing, travel, etc.).

Sumer, in the region known as the Fertile Crescent (between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers), is considered the birthplace of civilization. City-states were the dominant type of society, which was divided up according to wealth and occupation.

If you weren’t nobility, you might have owned your land, but you’d likely pay hefty taxes to the king. Pretty good protection racket. Also, temples were a big deal because the deities had to be kept happy, and big temples apparently kept them from getting too irked.

Sumerians learned how to count and write on cuneiform. Now histories could be recorded. Nice.
Somewhere in this general timeframe, China, then Mesoamerica* also figured out writing systems. Awesome.
A long bit later, the Phoenicians (in what is now mostly Lebanon), created an alphabet. Epic.

*”Mesoamerica” refers to the area of North America from Mexico through Central America (roughly speaking)

So the Sumerians were super smart and learned how to travel long distances and trade with other peoples, which spread their ideas and inventions to other places as well. And when you’re super good at something, what happens?

You get copied.

That’s what happened. The Sumerians’ ideas got copied, imitated, and in many cases, bettered. That’s how things work: somebody does it first, and then other people do it better.

Note : I’m the oldest child of a bunch of people, so I totally resonate with this. I was around first for a bunch of stuff, and then I got to see my siblings, and then my own children do what I did later…and so much better than I did. Not being self-deprecatory. It’s a reality and it’s a beautiful thing. Ideas spread. Especially good ideas that work.

So be okay with being copied.

Like I said, others did it better. The Egyptians, for example. They built a powerful nation that outlasted the Sumerians because, well, civil wars don’t make a country stronger. Eventually all the fighting between city-states destroyed them. Spoiler alert: Greece should have paid attention to this a couple thousand years later.

So Egypt copied the Sumerians, only better. They had the world’s longest river (the Nile) and became successful at trading, agriculture, and getting temple-building labor from the peasants, an idea that many other civilizations used for many years thereafter.

2000s (Bronze Age*)

Across the Mediterranean, the Minoans on the island of Crete built some killer palaces and advanced engineering ideas such as water supply and sewage systems.

The Indus Valley* civilization was advanced enough to build cities on a grid system, amidst other innovative building layout ideas and progressive urban planning.

**The Indus Valley is in modern-day Pakistan and northern India

Chinese civilizations were well-organized into provinces and made many advances in writing and art.

In North America, the Olmec civilization is sometimes called “the Sumer of the New World,” because of how they influenced and inspired the civilizations that followed. They did a lot with a little - the only domesticated animals they had were turkeys and dogs; the only grain they had was maize, a difficult crop to grow.

Bronze Age : 3000 BC - 1200 BC

1100s BC

Some people chose to settle down and build permanent structures.

Others chose a nomadic life.

The latter - the nomads - drove their herds all over Europe and Central Asia. They traded with those in the cities, and when they battled, they usually won, because they were awesome at riding horses and killing people from them.