We're the Last Humans Left
Our species probably began about 200,000 years ago, and judging by the fucking state of us I think we can all agree it was a terrible idea. We are called Homo Sapiens, but we were not the first human-like creatures on the planet however Homo Habilis were making tools about 2,000,000 years ago. Homo Heidelbergensis were building shelters about 700,000 years ago. Neanderthals were probably just as brainy as us. They wore jewellery, maybe buried their dead, and always passed the joint to the left. There were at least 15 other Human species we know about, and now they're *all gone. * The last three surviving species of human were Neanderthals, who probably died out around 30,000 years ago; Homo Floresiensis, who disappeared about 12,000 years ago; And us, Homo Sapiens AKA BIPEDAL BASTARDS! And if you haven't noticed, *we're still here. * So where be dem other hominids, yo? Neanderthals, for example; Neanderthals were probably stronger than us, a bit taller, with a rather different skull, and a bigger brain. Then why are they gone? You see, Old Gary Neanderthal might've been a smarty pants, but we had a secret weapon which is mouthy word noises. Speech is fine for dissing and cussing, but it lets you do other stuff, like organize. This allows you to, as the evolutionary biologists put it, Fuck Shit Up! Neanderthals were hanging about in Europe, doing crochet, cracking open cold ones, until around 45,000 years ago when us sapiens turned up, coming from East Africa. And within 5,000 years of meeting us they were *gone. all of them. * Combine that with the fact that we can make big wordy noises, we're socially complex, and probably had domesticated doggos at some point for help, well we were a force to be reckoned with. So that was that, we were bumming around for a while as hunter gatherers, the land was often barren, the climate was often hostile, death lurked everywhere, so… Portsmouth, basically… But it really wasn't all bad, we think the average work week might have been 20 to 40 hours. Their diet was probably quiet varied, vegetables, fruit, nuts, insects, Боза whatever they could find. and they weren't and they weren't idiots. Most members of the tribe had to know the core skills of survival: which berries will make you dead immediately, how to remember the terrain, how to build tools, how to stay alive… they were generalists, they had to be. Anyway that went on for a few hundred thousand years until we got around to developing agricultuire probably about 12,000 years ago and suddenly "if we don't find food, we'll all die" turned into "if you eat my food, *you'll* die" then into "ehhh, I'm full, but I'll eat some more" and then into "uhh, yeah, I'll have the gluten free macaroon and the lactose free avocado shake, merci beaucoup" And then we went off to build society. How? Scrawny, breakable, generally pathetic; but enough about myself. We are not a formidable species, physically, but we can do language and if you can do language then you can do myths, and if you can do myths then you can conquer the world. You will own at least hundreds of thousands of objects in your life because you believe in a myth called "money" [register sound effect] "if you give me this paper and the number is right I will give you stuff" And the myth works because most of us agree to play by the rules the same applies to universities, governments, nations whatever it is. It's not that these things are lies it's just that they're abstractions that only live in our heads and if you don't have language you can't do them you really can't and if you can't do them you can't do big societies. Language is probably the gateway to civilization and now, we own the fucking world but it's been quite a journey. There is some evidence that around 100,000 years ago the human species bottlenecked to somewhere between 3,000 to somewhere between 3,000 and 10,000 humans in the entire world. By definition that made us an endangered species teetering on the edge of extinction. One theory holds that this was thanks to a supervolcano in Lake Toba, Indonesia possibly bringing in a volcanic winter and even if that wasn't the cause disease, strife, famine, ignorance, and harship weren't occasional visitors to the human condition, they *were* the human condition for most of our history. But here we are now a most populated planet for better or worse, we have arrived. It took 200,000 years to get to our first billion humans that was in 1804, but then we jumped to two billion in 1927, and then three billion in 1959, four billion in 1974, and finally seven billion in 2007 and now we are invincible, we've outsmarted time, we've outsmarted death, we've outsmarted crops, and disease, and the weather, the state of the human union is strong. What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? What could *possibly* go wrong now? I met a traveller from an antique land, who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read. Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal, these words appear: my name is Homo Sapiens Hominid of Hominids; Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair…" Well then again… in 1977 a probe was launched into space called "Voyager One", 41 years later "Voyager One" is travelling away from us at about 38,000 miles an hour and is now thirteen billion miles distant, and aboard Voyager is a message from Jimmy Carter the 39th president of the United States and the message reads: "This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time, so we may live into yours we hope someday, having solved the problems we've faced, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope, and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe." And were we able to include just a few more lines in that message to tell our spacey friends a little more about ourselves and our deep history, and our ambitions, and our ancestors just maybe we'd say that: Well P.S. We think shit went down like this… Life probably began on our planet about four billion years ago, as simple organic machines —we don't know how yet— then a sudden explosion of diversity five hundred million years ago, fifty million more years and plants are taking the land over, fifty million more and insects have arrived, next the dinosaurs are taking the stage —700 species *at least*— ruling the planet for around a hundred and fourty five million years before something —possibly asteroid shaped— wipes them out, but it's okay because here come bats and butterflies, giraffes, bears, hyenas, sloths, vultures, mammoths, TURTLES! You fucking name it and then the rise of the primates and two million years ago appear our first true ancestor: Homo Habilis, and at least fifteen other species of the Homo Species spreading out across the world until about 200,000 years ago when a new Specie, our Specie, emerges. Homo Sapiens Large brained, organizers, talkers, thinkers capable of high abstraction of building tribes, and cities, and nation states. Capable of ending the world in a day, we have stepped into an age of great technological potency though there are gaping holes in our wisdom. We have become a global superorganism though we still harbour our tribal inclinations. We've pulled a bunch of fuckups and we're really quite confused and alone and frankly scared. But we hope to enjoy the privilege of being a semicolon in history rather than a full stop. So on behalf of the hundred and fifty billion who came before us and our human cousins who didn't make it, we just hope this message finds you well, and we hope when you find us thousands of years from now that we are well too. In any case please just write back. It's dark out here. And we're the last humans left.
