Christian Ashford

Have you ever looked at a snake or a spider and immediately felt a tingling sensation in your whole body? It turns out it’s not just a few of us who feel this way, but rather, the fear of snakes and spiders is common in a large human population. Researchers think that it is also … Read more

About 10,000 years ago, humans began to live in densely populated communities. This is because of the advent of farming and agriculture, which allowed societies to support more individuals. Before, they were living in much smaller groups as hunter-gatherers. This meant that they were totally dependent on what nature could provide. In other words, they … Read more

Before 10,000 years ago, humans are believed to have had bigger bodies and, on average, taller. This was a time when the primary lifestyle of most Homo sapiens around the world was hunting and gathering resources. They would scavenge and forage the food sources in their natural habitats, and when it was depleted, either via … Read more

The modern human species, Homo sapiens, is believed to have existed for around 300,000 years, but our bodies did not always stay the same all throughout the journey. Researchers found that around 10,000 years ago, there was a more dramatic but gradual shift in our size and strength. We became smaller and weaker as a … Read more

A new genetic study suggests that the human lineage or our ancestors may have nearly vanished around 900,000 years ago. Scientists found that there were only 1280 individuals who were able to reproduce or contribute to the gene pool of humans from that point on. There may have been other hominins that survived together with … Read more

Around 50,000 years ago, there were many different kinds of hominins that lived in various environments on Earth together with the modern human species. Our ancestors are thought to have originated and evolved in Africa. Then, 70,000 to 50,000 years ago, they migrated out to different continents, beginning with Europe and Asia. In these new … Read more

The growth of the human population for the vast majority of our history has remained fairly slow and steady, with some major events like glacial cycles and climate change causing disruptions. However, when human societies began farming around 12,000 to 10,000 years ago, a massive change happened: the human population started to grow rapidly. Our … Read more

Around 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers began to transition to a farming lifestyle gradually for a variety of reasons. It was one of the biggest turning points in the history of humanity, not just because it allowed our ancestors to produce their own food instead of relying on what’s readily available in nature, but because of … Read more

For most of human history, our way of life was nomadic, living as hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors hunted animals and gathered wild plants, mainly because they had not learned how to grow their own food yet through farming and agriculture. But around 12,000 years ago, the environment shifted, the ice age ended, and certain resources became … Read more

Around 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers had already started the transition to early farming. However, for most of human history, this was not the norm. Instead of growing food themselves, our ancestors scavenged, foraged, hunted, and gathered the resources they needed. But with farming, people began to settle in one place, making permanent homes instead of … Read more