Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin.
A lot can change over the course of a century.
In the early 20th century, Einstein wrote his theory of relativity.
In 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully created a polio vaccine.
And in 1990, the world wide web was invented.
But what about changes over a longer period of time, like a few million years?
Obviously, the Earth was a drastically different place, but it makes me wonder: could you,
a modern human, survive on Earth 2.5 million years ago?
To start off, let’s talk about the environment.
You, my friend, would be living in the Pleistocene Epoch, which spanned from 2.6 millions years
ago to 11,700 years ago.
This was the time period in which the most recent ice ages took place.
During the peak periods where most of the water on Earth was ice, the global average
temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Celsius colder than they are today.
This was a much cooler and drier Earth.
So already, unless you have an incredibly insulating jacket, your chances of survival
are looking pretty slim.
During this time, you may also have bumped into one of your earliest human ancestors
-- homo habilis.
This species looked more like apes than humans, but were able to walk on their back legs and
use their hands to make stone tools, hence its name, which means “handy man”.
But, luckily for you, if you encountered one of them, scientists are unsure if it would
attack.
The general consensus is that homo habilis were vegetarians and did not hunt anything
but small game.
So, in this sense, you may not be in direct harm.
But what about diseases?
The prevailing idea on the origin of human diseases is that many of them arose once animals
were domesticated.
However, with new data, it’s thought that diseases like tapeworms, mycobacterial infections,
tuberculosis, and leprosy were around during the Pleistocene Epoch.
And scientists believe that the bacteria B. bronchiseptica, which infected hominids 2.5
million years ago, may have evolved into the bacteria that is now responsible for whooping
cough.
And even more, scientists have recently determined that the parasites that cause malaria were
around 2.5 million years ago.
The parasites were relatively benign at that time, and malaria only became a major disease
after agriculture and dense human populations arose.
But if you were living 2.5 million years ago, without access to any of today’s medicine,
you would probably not make it too long.
Well that’s quite a sad note to end on.
To lighten the mood a bit, let me know what you would most want to see from 2.5 million
years ago.
Make sure you come back every Monday for a brand new video.
As always, I’m Blocko and this has been Life Noggin.
Don’t forget to keep on thinking!