The Massive Timescale of Human Ancestry

Human history did not begin with cavemen, but with microscopic life nearly four billion years ago. We are the current survivors of a vast, unbroken chain of existence that predates the planet’s complex plants and animals.

While we focus on our recent ancestors, our lineage traces back to the very dawn of life on Earth. Every one of your ancestors managed to survive long enough to reproduce across billions of years of shifting climates and mass extinctions. It is a staggering testament to biological resilience that this chain remains unbroken today. We are simply the most recent expression of an ancient, ongoing evolutionary experiment.