Pondering the big picture, what has changed in the last 100 years or so …

This article (republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license) is a useful recap of our understanding of human evolution, and an excellent visualization of that story, including salient talking points.

The millions-of-years history of our rise as a species is a fascinating story of patient pursuit of knowledge. A pursuit all too often underfunded and under-resourced, starting with singular archeological discoveries and growing into multidisciplinary collaboration. That joint research expanded the outlines of our story from bones & stones to geographic and climatic events, to genetic (DNA) arcs, and to social and cultural changes.