I love these videos so much. No fluff, no loud background music, no AI, just a well told story by someone who speaks clearly and calmly. Your vids sometimes help me to wind down after a stressful day :P

edit: I'm just about 12 minutes in and this video is one of the most interesting ones I've ever watched. so fascinating, I'm just sitting here in awe. the single ancestral tribe is wild to even think about, I was always under the assumption it was many many tribes, but this is so cool, had no idea this evidence existed

When showing maps of early human migrations, it would be a great help to show sea levels at the corresponding times.  Ocean levels were much lower 100,000 years ago.

Came for the Fermi paradox stayed for the quality!!

Mythic refresh pull

Thanks for all the work you do on these.  Your channel is fantastic.

You are the only YouTube channel that I will watch to the end of every video. Every topic you talk about is fascinating.

Hell yeah nick is back i needed this hour and a half on our early ancestors

the kind of content I want on my feed. I love these lectures

As someone who studies linguistics, I do have to disagree with the idea that all non-African languages are or even seem to be related. Indo-European languages, which make up the majority of humans’ spoken languages due to many factors, are in fact related, but this does nothing to explain how Sino-Tibetan languages or Austronesian languages or American languages could relate to each other. Even if they did share a common ancestor, there’s no way in modern linguistics to prove a relation that distant, especially considering how loanwords and the sprachbund effect can make languages seem more similar despite not sharing a common ancestor. A good example is Hungarian and other Ugric languages, which took loanwords from Turkic languages, but don’t show many other similarities between their reconstructed proto-languages.

tl;dr: It’s impossible to figure out whether 2 languages had a common ancestor a grillion years ago, and that’s what finding a “proto-World” or “proto-non-African” would entail. Even if this is true, that would have to be determined by time travelers.

Heck yeah, my show is on

You are one of the most interesting people on YouTube. Thank you for doing what you do.

Another excellent video, Nick! Keep them coming. I watch each of these a few times throughout the weeks

I know you’re more of a dinosaur guy, but I absolutely love that you’re taking this detour into early humans. Our prehistory remains one of the greatest mysteries of science.

It’s remarkable how much more we know than in the 19th Century and yet how much less clear the picture is in many ways.

Yk, i watched your mini series about the fermi paradox and explained everything i learned from it to my girlfriend and she thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Thank you sir.

It's fascinating to me that human history since the invention of writing Is a teeny tiny fraction of the human story. It's overwhelming to imagine all the people, the heroes, the villains, the legends, the myths, the tales of tragedy and loss as well as those of victory and vindication. All of these we will never know, and it drives me crazy not knowing.

Really appreciate the way you structure these lectures. It’s like close enough to my anthro undergrad lectures but like.. better lmao. Anyways keep up the awesome work 👏

It never ceases to amaze at how ingenious humans can be. As I’m watching your presentation, I’m reminded of my time living in Micronesia (40 years ago) and how those islands became inhabited thousands of years ago. They brought crops such as coconuts and taro, they built fish traps and fashioned fish hooks from shells, and on the island of Pohnpei, they built a complex of stone that would have been quite the engineering feat! It’s called Nan Mondol and some kings [had others] harvested basalt rock from an extinct volcano that could weigh several tons, moved across the island and built structures. THIS WAS 700 YEARS AGO! It really should be mentioned in the same breath as the pyramids and Stonehenge.  
So I enjoyed this presentation and appreciate the effort it must of taken to gather the information. I love the mystery of our ancestors’ migration.

This is so fascinating and you’re so insightful, I love learning about this. Thank you!

YES NICK I WAS JUST GETTING READY FOR BED!! I’ve been missing your videos!!!!

Thank you. Very balanced and thoughtful. Appreciate the graphics and especially the maps with routes and showing where land/water really were at times of human migration. Outstanding scholarship.