• NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I think about this a lot. Modern homo sapiens have been around for ~160,000 years. Recorded history starts around 5,000 years ago.

        I cannot comprehend the amount of human history we will simply never know.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          8 months ago

          There are actually 21 different species that are considered “humans.” Homo Erectus evolved about 2 million years ago and was at least capable of making fairly advanced stone tools.

          There used to be a belief in a “cognitive revolution” that took place around the second Out of Africa migration that populated the world with modern humanity, the point we could look at say, “Okay, this is where we REALLY started” but we keep finding older proof of advanced behavior in even our cousin species that very well might mean that we weren’t as special as we thought. If nothing else, we definitely know we were fucking our maybe-a-little-dumber cousins so their history is still our history.