Glue predates anatomically modern humans and other facts
November 4, 2021 4:06 PM Subscribe
The fact that I initially read the title as being about predatory glue says, I feel, something about where we've got to as a species.
posted by howfar at 5:17 PM on November 4, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by howfar at 5:17 PM on November 4, 2021 [9 favorites]
What a fantastic resource! Thanks for posting.
posted by misterbee at 5:23 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by misterbee at 5:23 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
I love the very pointed climate crisis discourse in this timeline:
201,300,000 years ago: Mass extinction event, eliminating more than two-thirds of all species (Triassic-Jurassic transition), linked to volcanic CO2 equivalent to projections for CE 21st century anthropogenic emissions.
posted by Paragon at 5:40 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
201,300,000 years ago: Mass extinction event, eliminating more than two-thirds of all species (Triassic-Jurassic transition), linked to volcanic CO2 equivalent to projections for CE 21st century anthropogenic emissions.
posted by Paragon at 5:40 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
tldr
4,100,000,000 earliest life on Earth: single-celled prokaryotic Archaea (Hadean Eon, 3.8-4.2 billion years ago)
2,800,000 earliest human, Homo sp., amongst the hominins (Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia): rounded chin as Australopithecus afarensis, but smaller and slimmer molars as the later Homo habilis
2021 0 human activities have unequivocally warmed atmosphere, ocean and land, intensifying heatwaves, floods and droughts; global warming will exceed 2°C without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions (IPCC, 2021): a reality check for policy makers
To be fair, it is a lot deeper than that and is a really good resource and thanks to jjray for posting it.
posted by Elmore at 5:43 PM on November 4, 2021
4,100,000,000 earliest life on Earth: single-celled prokaryotic Archaea (Hadean Eon, 3.8-4.2 billion years ago)
2,800,000 earliest human, Homo sp., amongst the hominins (Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia): rounded chin as Australopithecus afarensis, but smaller and slimmer molars as the later Homo habilis
2021 0 human activities have unequivocally warmed atmosphere, ocean and land, intensifying heatwaves, floods and droughts; global warming will exceed 2°C without immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions (IPCC, 2021): a reality check for policy makers
To be fair, it is a lot deeper than that and is a really good resource and thanks to jjray for posting it.
posted by Elmore at 5:43 PM on November 4, 2021
In an FPP on the blue long ago (I think; and probably within the last decade) I saw a website "game" that looked like a windows file explorer window with an expandable directory tree. The top level was the universe, and when you expanded that you got galaxies, and then you expand that and get star clusters (or some similar hierarchy)....anyway, eventually you might find planets and cities and little interesting things happening if you kept drilling down through the folder structure. This reminds me a little bit of that in how small it makes me feel. Wish I could find that "game" again, but haven't had any luck.
posted by msbrauer at 5:51 PM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by msbrauer at 5:51 PM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
I hope I live to see the discovery of +30,000 year old cave art that includes representational portraits of people.
posted by brachiopod at 5:55 PM on November 4, 2021
posted by brachiopod at 5:55 PM on November 4, 2021
Very cool. Love the Web 1.0ness of it.
posted by gwint at 6:11 PM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by gwint at 6:11 PM on November 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
msbrauer, the recursive folder universe game is Nested by Orteil!
posted by oulipian at 6:58 PM on November 4, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 6:58 PM on November 4, 2021 [17 favorites]
[35,000 years ago] a giant virus freezes into Siberian permafrost, melting back to virulent activity 35,000 years later
Gotta be blunt, I'm not crazy about how this movie ends.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:29 PM on November 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
Gotta be blunt, I'm not crazy about how this movie ends.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:29 PM on November 4, 2021 [4 favorites]
hey! who you callin' rounded chin?!
posted by slater at 8:48 PM on November 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by slater at 8:48 PM on November 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think I've said "Wow" about every 3 lines going down this list, I have 20-something Wikipedia tabs open so far, and I'm only about 20% through the list. Thanks for sharing this.
posted by Peccable at 10:19 PM on November 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Peccable at 10:19 PM on November 4, 2021 [3 favorites]
Si quaeris superfluum amoenam circumspice
a corruption of the Michigan state motto I just came up with
posted by jjray at 10:31 PM on November 4, 2021
a corruption of the Michigan state motto I just came up with
posted by jjray at 10:31 PM on November 4, 2021
This is something I'd never really thought about before:
• 110,000 YA: last appearance of Homo erectus (Ngandong, Java), 1.89 million years after its first appearance → the longest enduring species of human
• 40,000 YA: anatomically modern humans replace Neanderthals, our last remaining sibling species.
I don't know why, but my mental timeline of humanity didn't really factor in that there was another humanoid species, about whom we know comparatively little, spread across most of the planet and who just... lived that way... for almost two million years.
That's all of human history forty times over.
And in that 1/40th of their species lifespan, we have already burned one hell of a stripe into the fossil record.
Going out in a blaze of glory, we are.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:12 AM on November 5, 2021 [4 favorites]
• 110,000 YA: last appearance of Homo erectus (Ngandong, Java), 1.89 million years after its first appearance → the longest enduring species of human
• 40,000 YA: anatomically modern humans replace Neanderthals, our last remaining sibling species.
I don't know why, but my mental timeline of humanity didn't really factor in that there was another humanoid species, about whom we know comparatively little, spread across most of the planet and who just... lived that way... for almost two million years.
That's all of human history forty times over.
And in that 1/40th of their species lifespan, we have already burned one hell of a stripe into the fossil record.
Going out in a blaze of glory, we are.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:12 AM on November 5, 2021 [4 favorites]
Interesting chart of a speculative timeline.
posted by Liquidwolf at 7:05 AM on November 5, 2021
posted by Liquidwolf at 7:05 AM on November 5, 2021
Two questions that this list makes me think of:
1. What is the first first-person account we know of? A diary or contemporary history, not a reference to events of the past.
2. What is the first recorded emotion? I'm not sure how I would even define that, but I wonder about it.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:43 AM on November 5, 2021
1. What is the first first-person account we know of? A diary or contemporary history, not a reference to events of the past.
2. What is the first recorded emotion? I'm not sure how I would even define that, but I wonder about it.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:43 AM on November 5, 2021
I've been taught that Homo erectus tools changed remarkably little over 2 million years. So you have to figure the behavior underpinning their tool use was very biologically hard-wired and not subject to a lot of learning. Very weird to think to think about standing hominids using knives and hammers to butcher a carcass no more "intelligently" than animals use beaks and claws.
posted by little onion at 8:46 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by little onion at 8:46 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm just imagining a bunch of Homo erectus standing around, talking it over like Theodoric of York: "Wait a minute. Perhaps she's right. Perhaps I've been wrong to blindly follow the medical traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe we barbers should test these assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a "scientific method". Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, navigation. Perhaps I could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance!...Naaaaaahhh!"
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:13 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:13 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: → collective desire for cosmic order
posted by doctornemo at 9:23 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by doctornemo at 9:23 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
What is the first first-person account we know of?
While I don't think this is actually an answer to that particular question, a recent FPP led me to Angus Fletcher's Wonderworks, which has a chapter on Enheduanna, a Sumerian poet who names herself in her work; I think what fascinates me about that is, I'm not sure how to think about a time before that, a time when writers weren't inserting themselves into their work. The earliest sorta-diary appears to be the Egyptian Diary of Merer, but that seems much less...ah...personal? More business records than emotional records. Actually, now that I think about it, what about the complaint of Nanni to Ea-nasir about having purchased low-quality copper? Again, not, like, a personal history or anything like that, but definitely a recorded emotional situation--and one that is oddly relatable!
posted by mittens at 9:33 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
While I don't think this is actually an answer to that particular question, a recent FPP led me to Angus Fletcher's Wonderworks, which has a chapter on Enheduanna, a Sumerian poet who names herself in her work; I think what fascinates me about that is, I'm not sure how to think about a time before that, a time when writers weren't inserting themselves into their work. The earliest sorta-diary appears to be the Egyptian Diary of Merer, but that seems much less...ah...personal? More business records than emotional records. Actually, now that I think about it, what about the complaint of Nanni to Ea-nasir about having purchased low-quality copper? Again, not, like, a personal history or anything like that, but definitely a recorded emotional situation--and one that is oddly relatable!
posted by mittens at 9:33 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
what about the complaint of Nanni to Ea-nasir
I was definitely thinking about Ea-nasir when I asked the question, and I was actually trying to find a way to ask "What is the earliest relatable moment in history?" but I couldn't figure out how to explain what I meant.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:24 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
I was definitely thinking about Ea-nasir when I asked the question, and I was actually trying to find a way to ask "What is the earliest relatable moment in history?" but I couldn't figure out how to explain what I meant.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:24 AM on November 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by tiny frying pan at 5:11 PM on November 4, 2021 [2 favorites]