Hi all! So it took far too long for me to realise this but I severely mixed up my use of "Neolithic" and "Paleolithic" when referring to the time periods - the Neolithic began in 11-10,000 BCE. So whenever I refer to the Neolithic here I actually mean the Paleolithic that began 2.5 Million years ago and lasted until the Neolithic began. I sincerely apologise for my mistake, I should have known better and taken better care of my facts at the time - especially since its a major topic of the video. And Thankyou to those of you in the comments for the rightful corrections :)
Neo meaning newer, if you happen to confuse them. And my thoughts about why they migrated? A few reasons. Human nature: "The grass is always greener on the other side." Also, intertribal conflicts. Sometimes people move because they are forced out or don't wish to have confrontation and conflict. Maybe the secret to early human migrations was something as simple as having in-laws.
Quick little correction: the Straight-Tusked Elephant (Palaeoloxodon) is not descended from Steppe Mammoths or mammoths at all. Mammoths are more closely related to the modern Asian Elephant (and vice versa), while Palaeoloxodon is more closely related to African Elephants (specifically the African Forest Elephant).
Like the moment you see another band of humans on the western horizon, it's time to pack up and keep going east, because that's just way easier than fighting them
@@brotherknight9484 Probably not. Trying to take someones land is allways harder than just taking new land. After all you risk getting killed or wounded if you go into a conflict. So just searching for new land is easier.
@@DerMannDerSeineMutterwar But the act of "searching for new land" itself is conflict. Between strange weather and geographical features, new flora and fauna, people already living in the new land, people having the same idea of claiming land, etc. All sources of conflict.
Speaking as a game designer (not a historic expert, just someone who studies human decision making), I think the "drive" that brought people into Europe has a pretty simple explanation. You're a nomadic hunter-gatherer. You're encountering [problem]. You try to fix [problem] the usual way - Moving on in your route. But [problem] still seems to be following you around. It's pervasive, and worsening. You know this because your elders remember, and speak of, a time where [problem] was still happening, but wasn't as bad. And their elders, when they were young, had even less [problem]. So you have [problem], and some indications that [problem] is getting worse, and threatening your tribe. So, you try something a little desperate - You go farther than usual. You try to explore, try to find new hunting grounds, a new home, a new route. It's exhausting and scary, but turns out, you're able to find new places, with new problems, that are more solvable with some clever thinking and innovation. Congratulations, you're in [new place]! What is the place? Doesn't matter! It's better than [old place]. And you will tell this story to your young ones when you are elder, and they will know that [old place] wasn't as good as [new place], and when they grow, and the generations tick on, there will be stories about how your generation solved [problem] by going from [old place] to [new place]. And when they face a new problem some day, one solution will be available in their oral histories - Leave Old Place. Find New Place. Leave Problem behind you. Doesn't matter what the problem is. Doesn't matter what old place is, or what new place is - This is migration in a nutshell. The problem could be a lack of game, farm land becoming barren, chronic droughts, stories of gold in distant hills. When humans run into a problem they can't solve, they'll take a new place without that problem and with as many solvable problems as you can throw at them over just sitting and doing nothing. We are pattern-seekers, and problem-solvers. To cap this off, another worldbuilding channel (Biblaridion) recently coined a term I find to be VERY enlightening about human nature. "Obligate Sapience". This is coined as a distinction from "Facultative Sapience", where a species can learn new behaviors and invent new tools, but do not NEED to, and thus do so far less often. Think crows, octopi, dolphins, etcetera. Humans, on the other hand, are defined as a species that lacks the ability to "opt out" of sapient behaviors - we H A V E to invent. We H A V E to learn. We H A V E to change. We cannot do otherwise, or we die. We cannot simply depend on what we have - We need NEW things. It is a compulsion born out of evolutionary necessity. Funnily enough, though, our immense capacity to learn allows us to learn our way out of said compulsion, in theory. I quite like the theory - You can read Obligate Sapience as a sort of deficiency of non-sapient options, much how an obligate carnivore can't subsist very well off of vegetation even if it wants or needs to. That doesn't mean a lion is incapable or disabled, just that they are defined by certain constraints. Such, then, is the same with humans. At least according to this framing/theory, which I happen to like very much.
I have been wanting to run a "100,000 BC Earth" themed D&D campaign, but when I brought it up with my group, all they ended up talking about was how they would probably just end up Dr. Stone-ing and invent microchips before learning how to smelt bronze. So I have shelved it until a few more years have passed, and they don't remember Dr Stone as well.
I was in the middle of doing research for my own comic when I stumbled upon this channel. Your content is nothing short of amazing! This is an era that deserves a lot more attention than it gets in pop culture. Most often, the fact that civilization exists is treated as a given, almost as of people intrinsically knew how to farm or make swords. It took generations of trial, error and hard work. I am certain that Immortal will stand as a wonderful tribute to our ancestors. I look forward to reading this!
Wonderful work! One thing to consider is that if you want to eventually introduce other Homo sapiens and neanderthal tribes, you can go bonkers with skin, hair and eye color combinations and face shape. There was no such thing as “modern human races” (by that I mean the distinct big populations of humans with shared superficial features and ancestry we have today) back in the paleolithic, so each and every tribe or clan could look different. There was an overall far greater diversity of human morphology than today. For example, it seems like dark skin color was common among different populations of european hunter-gatherers up until 10’000 years ago because it just keeps appearing in paleo-genomes. And some of these dark-skinned europeans apparently had blue or grey eyes according to genome analysis. There were humans in the late Pleistocene that didn’t look like any humans alive today. I think this can be a big source of inspiration!
So glad you included the Irish Elk. They're a fascinating creature and my favourite megafauna (although I am a bit biased). My favourite anecdote about them is the actual theory that they went extinct because their antlers became too large and they kept getting caught in trees. It's hard to do their sheer size justice in pictures but you're welcome any time in the Natural History Museum in Dublin where you can come face-to-face with a whole collection of Irish Elk fossils. Although it's more like face-to-legs. You'd have to crane your neck to see their faces. :D
Yes definitely! Although I haven't figured out exactly how I'd write different dialects and languages in an engaging way? It'll be something to think about for sure though :)
8:49 hey just because some cultures can't remember things doesn't mean others don't! Indigenous Peoples in North America still have stories passed down through thousands of years about mammoths and a massive flood that happened at the end of the last glacial maximum.
@@supercharged5-39 Maybe you've heard this a million times and I'm sorry if you have, but did you know there are cultures with an old flood myth in every continent? But yeah, the mammoth thing is cool, I've never heard that
Holy shit I just realized when I pause the video there's a little "View key concept" button that brings up articles on what you're talking about. That is such a cool feature.
I’m loving this! My particular interest (currently) is chalcolithic to Bronze Age, but this is all interesting. Looking forward to more research updates!
Keep in mind almost all modern species also existed, modern animals are just the survivors of the last extinction. There were mammoths and sabretooths but also red deer and grey wolves, even tropical animals like tigers, poison dart frogs, parrots, and reef fish all existed back then too. There were still tropics, just smaller ones. 50,000 years is not enough for large mammals to speciate for example dingoes, grey wolves, and poodles are the same species. 50,000 years may be enough for things like rodents as well as bugs to speciate though.
Gorgeous art at the end, and a wonderful hook! You are truly *goated* with the research, I must say. Your world is distinct from earth, though, or at least the map is different if similar. How much of your megafauna research will you apply directly, and do you plan on remixing any of the species or inventing new ones? (The strange humanoid people at the end make me think maybe you're doing some of that.) Also, seems like you've started planning out your first arc! Congrats! If you need need anyone to bounce ideas off of for outlining, I'd be glad to help. If you're the type of person who likes to have a community space for writing you might consider starting a discord, or joining an existing one if you haven't already.
Thank you so much! :) As of yet I don't quite have an idea on whether or not I'll remix the world's fauna, maybe I'd play around with the domesticated animals a bit but nothing too far on the fantastical scale, I find it wayy more interesting to find and use real life events and creatures with a bit of a fantastical twist. But I am making an exception with the humanoids of the world, they're going to be by far the most removed from reality for obvious reasons ^^" And yes! The plot for the first arc is well underway, though I'm sure I'll make a lot more changes to it before I'm done, words can't express how extremely excited I am to show you it all when it's done! And as for help and discord stuff I'm a bit hesitant to set stuff like that up since I have zero experience in managing a discord or taking external ideas (it's a character flaw I know) ^^" but it's always a possibility! I do love hearing all the speculations and ideas you guys have :P
@@hannahsmth I don't think it's a character flaw, tbh. I have an ulterior motive: I've been trying to find a good online writing community. So I was kind of hoping I could trick you into setting one up. 😅
I always wonder if tales about massive floods like the story of Atlantis or the biblical tale of Noah were tales passed down over many generations that had their origin in the rising sea levels after the glacial maximum. They seem to be present in many societies with little to no knowledge about each other, and relating back to a global and monumental event with massive impact on early societies would explain a lot - and be really cool. 😅 I really like your art as well as your way of presenting information, I look forward to actually reading your work.
Ah, yes, the European Wild Ass, one of the rudest animals ever existed. People around me says that I belong to England, but I don't know why. PS: if I were you I wouldn't stick perfectly to Earth's past, to have that you should have a perfect copy of Earth from its orbital parameters to geological history including that famous asteroid that made a brontosaurus-based diet unfeasible. My humble suggestion is that you throw something "out of place" here and there so to have an actual alternate history instead of a planet that is not Earth but it's coincidentally precisely like Earth even to the scale of extinction events. But then, the book is yours, you do you! XD
Thankyou for the humble suggestion :) its an excellent idea and one I'll definitely try to develop more as I work on the world! And you're definitely not an ass :)
I'm still surprised these videos are supposed to be oriented towards writers and world building when they are very well researched even above the average enthusiast and/or layman. As for why the migration of humans came to be one theory that was not mentioned, is the hunting grounds/animal migration plus the seasonal fruits. This came to the spotlight when seeing the semi-nomadic tribes in America and reading journals of European colonists that lived amongst them. Tribes would migrate following herds like the Bison other tribes like the Karankawas in the coast of Texas would move to the coast for a reliable source of sea-food and them move inland searching fruits and edible plants like Nopales. It is actually fascinating that even as the tribe started to grow, spread and divide, each spreading to different areas, when the "fruit season" was close they would still end up returning to those places where those unique fruits and plants would grow. There's also the food/resource depletion and competition theory but this comment is already long as it is.
1:33 For a straight answer (if you haven't found one since posting this video) on the same time of ending for the pleistocene and the paleolithic: I'm pretty sure that whenever any geologic time unit comes to an end, so do all its subdivisions, so when the neogene period ended, so did the pliocene epoch and the piacenzian age. Kinda like when a day ends, so does the last hour of that day, and the last minute of that hour, and so on, but just bigger and with units that aren't defined by duration. Don't confuse me for a geologist though, I'm not, I had to look up those examples because I wanted more layers than just two
I have a manga called “to your eternity” similar but very different from yours. The main character isn’t human and is immortal. His name ironically is Fushi like the Japanese word for immortal (fushimi). He also like your shows the evolutions of people but it isn’t placed on earth and doesn’t focus on historic events. It’s really interesting and it has an anime I suggest giving it a watch if you have the time it’s good! It follows the concept of what it would be like to be immortal but it is so different from your story I love looking at the two! Amazing video and for a history nerd like me I found this very enjoyable.
Awesome! I'm inspired and I really want to make a series like yours for my world, whiche I have been building on and off for about seven years now. But sadly I am not comfortable with my drawing skills since I am just at stick figuere level and don't know how to illustrate my world / videos otherwise
Hey its OK! It's incredible to have the ability to stick with an idea for so long, it shows you're really passionate about it, I hope you can create your story, regardless of art skills, a good story will always find a way to be told :)
Take it from someone that only started to learn how to draw recently because i had the internal belief that you need to have talent to draw, but it is a skill to learn lile everything else, and now i can draw better than i could ever imagined
YEEEEES pre-iceage media! Thats so awesome and underrepresented. 8:40 well humans dont live for 1000s of years. 12:16 and also modern cattle, to preserve the species they were combined. 18:20 thats so epic
Wow, this was a very informative and fascinating video. I was allways really interested in nature and history, but somehow i knew very little about these eras.
Surprised how recently animal dung started showing up as burn fuel. So thanks for getting me to Google "how long have humans used animal poo" I guess. 😂
This is so cool. Even just learning we had a past in such a setting. But then a visual representation, and the stories that may've happened is so engaging & inspiring.
I'd highly encouage you to look up Will Lord's videos on prehistoric skills to see what the mindset of a prehistoric person might have been like. We diliniate our world into reality and myth but we see from aboriginal tribes that the ancients may not have thought this way. I'd love to see some more symbolic and spiritual themes. Additionally, North02 has some amazing content depicting life in prehistory defying some conventions. Populations of neaderthals for example lived near the ocean, and ate more shellfish than mammal meat, whereas others were almost vegitarian. It'd be cool to avoid and subvert older tropes and showcase anotomically modern people just like us shaped by such a different world. I love ur style and you absolutely rock!
This is a wonderful video and I am quite interested in the upcoming story you are trying to make. I have my own ideas for stories. One of them is like a self-insert where a mental copy placed into a chimeric genetic body created by Alien Space Bats had been sent into the Cretaceous period. The main character is in his second life because his first life had been spent as a control system of an army of mutant humanoids created by the Eurasian Technocracy in order to fight off possible extraterrestrial feline creatures who wield mecha suits until that world got mysteriously destroyed. Now the main character has to deal with Mesozoic lifeforms and the upcoming mass extinction event caused by asteroids or the volcanic Decan Traps in India. Another story idea I had is where two beings, crafted by Alien Space Bats, are sent to an Earth 100,000 or more years into the past. One of them is a cyborg man and the other is a female powerful being with terrifying inhuman looks and a cynical mindset due to traumatic past lives or souls. The cyborg man and the powerful being will have to work together to have a good life as well as saving humanity from itself. This means doing some stuff to transform the various human races of the time like Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens into a new post human super race. Inspiration for that stuff came from stuff like Neon Genesis Evangelion, H.G. Well's The Shape of Things to Come, and other stuff. Anyway, good luck on your upcoming story and other projects!
11:47 Be careful about conflating "x years ago" and "x years BCE", especially when the numbers get small-ish. The pyramids of Giza were built around 2500 BCE, or about 4500 years ago. The pyramids were built longer before the lives of Caesar and Cleopatra than the time between their lives and the present.
If you are looking for some real-world examples of stories of human immigration over uncharted land then I would recommend you read the diary and accounts of George Catlin as he traveled across the American frontier. I know you might not be able to relate to his lived experience but you will find his story interesting. Same with a man named William Buckley who lived in Australia for 40 years before colonization after escaping a penal colony.
Great video, I'm looking forward to hearing something more about that mysterious race. Also,are you still going to make compilations of shorts? I don't know why but I prefer watching them in such format. Or maybe will you combine them with videos about general worldbuilding like this one?
Thankyou! I absolutely will, I've just slowed down a bit in the making of shorts to put in a compilation ^^" but it's good to know you prefer them that way! I'll definitely keep compiling them :)
If my memory serves me correctly (it usually doesn’t) This is around the time that agriculture is starting To take hold? I would be interesting to see the first developments of settlements seen in the forests.
11:55 I have to set this right because it bothers me so much, maybe you got something mixed up or something idk. The Great Pyramid of Giza was NOT built 2500 years ago but 2500 years BC!!! Thats an extra 2000 years. That is the reason why people are so surprised when they hear that Cleopatra VII (the famous Cleopatra, last Pharao of Egypt that lived in the 1st century BC) lived closer to our own age than to the construction of the Pyramids. Devil's in the details and this is the only mistake I have found in this video but it bothers me so much.
Ah. The archeology. Never liked it even though it's factually interesting. However! I have learned something new about myself during this video. I didn't even realise how normal was it for me to think humans migrated to new lands with intention. Which is total bogus to think of. It was a very complex process spreading through centuries. Humans were motivated for sure but not for the sake of exploration. Animal migration patterns changed so nomads moved on. Climate changed so everyone and everything moved. The spreading of humans were the result of changing climate, shifting lands and depleting resources. In such a large timescale... everything just happened. There was not one goal behind it. There were billions.
Aye I’m glad I came across this, I’m loving this idea but I can’t help but notice a few typos do you mean Paleolithic instead of Neolithic? Neolithic is the start of agriculture
My only concern is that you should avoid whitewashing the era. Lighter skin is a more recent adaptation. Don't get me wrong, it did exist at the time, mostly in Neanderthals really, and it's always been mainly an adaptation to boreal or arctic climates. All I recommend is that non-neanderthal characters especially (i.e., any homo sapiens characters) should have darker or more vibrant skin tones, though since it's a work of fiction, diversity in appearance especially in the main cast is always recommended, so go ham.
Actually there are some neanderthal paleo-gemomes from Siberia that show dark skin color. So even that species probably had a great diversity of features across it’s colossal range. Neanderthals even had slightly different bone morphology between the Middle Eastern “population”, the “classic” European “population” and the Asiatic/Siberian “population”. And then there’s the enigmatic Denisovans who remain a big mystery. Human diversity was probably wild back in the Palaeolithic.
@@Evergreen_Wizard of course, I didn't mean to imply all neanderthals had lighter skin or any generalizations of that kind. I just mean that lighter skin was a later development in homo sapiens at least, and therefore it is better to opt for middle-to-dark skin tones both for accuracy and for the sake of modern representation
Yeah but important to note that humans had mass extinction 17k years before the event of the story on humans time scale (we all have 3.5k common ancestors that roughly means 40k survived it) so humans at the time were probably only just returning to be diverse group and adaptations only started to appears (btw the same mass extinction is what make humans today one of the least genetically diverse specie on earth (like probably only more diverse from species that have clones kids))
Dark skin is also an adaptation, skin colour based on genotypic projections is always going to be guesswork, so creative liberty with the appearance is totally acceptable. None of these people depicted are genetically in large part related to the ones that currently roam the earth. Depicting an aurignacian European with dark skin doesn't mean he's a modern west african, and if he did have black skin it doesn't mean that he was related to that group either. Appearances are notoriously guesswork oriented
@@entropicemerald807 yes creative liberty should be taken. that's what I said. dark skin first appeared millions of years ago, thought to coincide with the loss of significant fur. I'm just saying that for these people living in stone age mediterranean or africa analogue to ALL have PALE skin is kind of silly, ahistorical, and contextually ill-advised
Uhh, the pyramids are about 4,600 years old. If they were 2,500 years old, they would have been built in 500 BCE, around the time the Roman Republic got into the swing of things. Hate to be the ACKSHUALLY guy, but due to my love of archaeology and ancient Egypt, that one bugged me. Saying they were built around 2,500 BCE, not years ago, would be more accurate.
One thing to note about human migration: humans at this time, like all animals, followed food. They would not quite form villages in paleolithic but it is believed they would stay in a certain region as long as it could support them or until the seasons started to change. They would then move with the migrating animals they hunted. There was likely no great manifest destiny.
the title with the thumbnail seem to suggest an extreme misunderstandung, bc ruins of civilisation have been found that date back to over 500 000 years ago
@@gamma6495 I read it on twitter with a clip from a documentary so i looked again & found that it's an over 500 000 years old wooden tool, which is also incredible. I just looked up "500 000 years old ruin" & found plenty results I'll look for that docu later
