Full transcript
0:00You got in your car this morning, turned
0:01the key, pressed the pedal, and moved 40
0:03miles an hour without using a single
0:05muscle. 100,000 years ago, that same
0:07trip would have taken two full days of
0:08walking, barefoot, through territory
0:10that could kill you. No road, no path,
0:13no sign telling you what's ahead. For
0:14almost all of human history, getting
0:16anywhere meant risking everything, and
0:18you had nothing to carry you there
0:19except your own two feet. Today, you can
0:21fly across the planet in a day. You can
0:23order something from the other side of
0:24the world, and it shows up at your door.
0:26Movement is so easy now that it's
0:28basically invisible. But, for roughly
0:29300,000 years, every single journey a
0:32human being ever took happened at
0:33walking speed. And that one limitation
0:35shaped everything about how we lived,
0:37what we ate, who we married, and how
0:39much of the world we ever got to see.
0:41So, let's start at the beginning. Your
0:43feet. Humans are the best long-distance
0:45walkers on the planet, but definitely
0:46not the fastest. A cheetah can hit 70
0:49miles an hour. A horse can sustain 30
0:51for miles. You top out at maybe 15, and
0:53only for a few seconds before you're
0:55gasping. Speed was never the point,
0:57though. You can walk 20 miles in a day,
0:59sleep, and do it again tomorrow, and the
1:01next day, and the next. You can do this
1:04for weeks. No other animal on Earth can
1:06do that. Your feet have arches that act
1:08as springs, and your Achilles tendon
1:10stores and releases energy with every
1:11step, so your muscles don't carry the
1:13full load. There's a ligament running up
1:15the back of your neck that keeps your
1:16head stable while your body moves
1:18underneath it, and you have about 2
1:20million sweat glands cooling you down
1:22while every other large mammal on the
1:23savanna overheats and has to stop.
1:25You're not built to be fast. You're
1:27built to never stop. In 1978,
1:29paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey
1:31discovered a trail of footprints in
1:32Laetoli, Tanzania. They were pressed
1:34into volcanic ash 3.6 million years ago.
1:36Two individuals walking upright, side by
1:38side. The oldest evidence of bipedal
1:40walking ever found. And they look almost
1:42exactly like yours. For millions of
1:44years, that was the only transportation
1:46technology humans had. And somehow, it
1:48was enough to take us further than any
1:49species has ever gone. Starting roughly
1:5170,000 years ago, humans began walking
1:54out of Africa. Not in one march. This
1:55happened over thousands of years,
1:57generation by generation, small groups
1:59pushing a little further into territory
2:01which no human had ever seen. They
2:02crossed the Middle East, they spread
2:03across Asia, they reached Europe, they
2:05walked into Siberia, crossed a land
2:07bridge into Alaska, and kept going south
2:08through the Americas. That's roughly
2:1015,000 miles without knowing the
2:12destination even existed. And the thing
2:14that doesn't get talked about enough is
2:15that they weren't walking randomly.
2:17Archaeologists have found obsidian tools
2:19hundreds of miles from the nearest
2:20volcanic source, shells found far
2:22inland, amber traded across mountain
2:24ranges. These people were covering
2:26massive distances on purpose, to trade,
2:28to connect with other groups, to find
2:29specific resources they knew existed
2:31because someone had told them about it.
2:33This wasn't wandering, this was
2:34networking on foot. The problem is,
2:36walking works great until something gets
2:38in the way. You can walk across a
2:40desert, you can walk over a mountain
2:41pass, but a river, a river stops you in
2:43your tracks. And rivers were everywhere.
2:45They cut through every migration route,
2:47every hunting ground, every trade path.
2:48For hundreds of thousands of years, a
2:50body of water was basically a wall. You
2:52either found a shallow crossing or you
2:54turned around. And then, somehow, humans
2:56figured out something no other land
2:57animal ever has, how to cross water on
2:59purpose. In 2003, archaeologists working
3:02on the island of Flores in Indonesia
3:04found stone tools dating back roughly
3:06800,000 years. The problem is that
3:08Flores has never been connected to the
3:09mainland. Even during the lowest sea
3:11levels of the ice ages, there was always
3:13at least 12 miles of open ocean between
3:15the island and the nearest land, which
3:17means one thing, someone made the
3:18crossing. We don't know what they used.
3:20Wood rots, bamboo decomposes. Whatever
3:23they floated on is long gone. But the
3:25tools are there, which means the
3:26crossing happened. The first boats were
3:28probably nothing, a fallen log, a bundle
3:30of reeds tied together, not designed,
3:32discovered. Someone grabbed a floating
3:33log to cross a stream and didn't drown.
3:35That was the breakthrough. But what
3:37happened next was deliberate. Around
3:3965,000 years ago, humans crossed from
3:41Southeast Asia to Australia. That
3:43crossing meant sailing at least 60 miles
3:45of open ocean. You can't see Australia
3:47from the other side. You can't drift
3:48there by accident. Someone built
3:50something that could float, pointed it
3:51toward water they couldn't see across,
3:53and paddled. Think about that for a
3:54second. They left solid ground with no
3:56idea if there was anything on the other
3:58side. The oldest boat we've ever found
3:59is the Pesse Canoe from the Netherlands,
4:01about 10,000 years old, just a
4:03hollowed-out log. But the technology
4:05goes back way further than that. People
4:06were already living on islands they had
4:08no way of reaching on foot tens of
4:10thousands of years before that canoe was
4:11ever carved. And then the Polynesians
4:13did something insane. Starting around
4:143,000 years ago, they crossed the
4:16Pacific Ocean, the largest body of water
4:18on Earth. They built double-hulled
4:20canoes, loaded them with food and
4:21animals and entire families, and sailed
4:23thousands of miles reading nothing but
4:25the stars, the direction of ocean
4:26swells, the way birds flew, and the
4:28color of clouds near land. No compass,
4:30no map, just observations so precise it
4:32still impresses modern navigators. They
4:34reached Hawaii, Easter Island, New
4:36Zealand, every habitable island in the
4:38Pacific. Some of those voyages covered
4:40over 2,500 miles of open water with
4:43nothing in between. Walking conquered
4:45land, boats conquered water, but there
4:46was still a problem nobody had solved.
4:48You can walk 20 miles, but you cannot
4:50walk 20 miles carrying a 200-lb animal
4:53you just killed. For most of human
4:54history, the limit on transportation
4:56wasn't distance, it was weight. You
4:58could only move what your body could
4:59carry. And your body can handle maybe 40
5:01to 60 lbs before it starts breaking you
5:03down. So, humans started cheating. First
5:05thing they tried was dragging. You kill
5:07something big, throw it on a hide, and
5:08drag it back to camp. We know they did
5:10this because archaeologists have found
5:11wear marks on ancient hides that only
5:13show up when something heavy has been
5:15dragged a long way. Then someone had a
5:17better idea, the travois. Two long poles
5:19tied together in a V shape with a
5:21platform slung between them. You drag
5:22the narrow end, the wide end carries the
5:24load. It spreads the weight out, and
5:26just like that, one person could move
5:27100 lbs or more. Here's what's wild
5:29about that. The travois might be one of
5:31the oldest ways humans ever moved
5:33anything, but it's made of wood and
5:35leather, so almost none of them
5:36survived. The only reason we know it
5:37existed is because people were still
5:39using it when Europeans showed up in the
5:41Americas thousands of years later. But
5:43the real breakthrough in moving weight
5:44wasn't something you could build, it was
5:46something you could befriend. Around
5:4815,000 years ago, humans domesticated
5:50dogs, first animal we ever partnered
5:52with. And one of the first jobs we gave
5:53them was hauling weight. In the Arctic,
5:55dogs pulled sleds across ice and snow. A
5:57single dog can move about 45 lb. A team
6:00of six could carry a family's entire
6:02camp. But dogs are small. We needed
6:04something bigger. About 5,500 years ago,
6:07on the steps of what is now Kazakhstan,
6:09humans figured out the horse. We know
6:11this because of a group called the
6:12Botai. Archaeologists found wear marks
6:14on horse teeth from bits. Somebody had
6:16been putting something in that animal's
6:17mouth to control it. They found mare's
6:19milk baked into pottery. These weren't
6:21people who hunted horses. They rode them
6:23and milked them and built their entire
6:25lives around them. And the horse changed
6:27everything. For 300,000 years, roughly
6:295,200 years old, the fastest a human
6:31could travel was about 4 mph, walking
6:33speed. On a horse, you could hit 30. In
6:35a single generation, the human world got
6:37eight times smaller. Suddenly, you could
6:39cover in days what used to take weeks.
6:41Messages moved faster, trade routes
6:43stretched further, and warfare changed
6:45forever because an army on horseback
6:46could reach you before you even knew
6:48they were coming. Donkeys hauled goods
6:49through deserts. Camels made it across
6:51the Sahara. Reindeer dragged sleds
6:53through Arctic snow. Llamas carried
6:55cargo over the Andes. Wherever humans
6:57showed up, they found whatever animal
6:58fit and put it to work. But we weren't
7:00done. There was one more invention
7:01coming, and it took an absurdly long
7:03time to show up. Here's something that
7:05doesn't make sense until you think about
7:06it. Humans crossed every ocean on Earth
7:08before anyone invented the wheel. The
7:09oldest known wheel turned up in the
7:11Ljubljana Marshes of Slovenia, roughly
7:135,200 years old. That's it. Boats go
7:16back at least 10,000 years and probably
7:18way further. Horses were tamed 5,500
7:20years ago. Humans had already sailed to
7:22Australia 65,000 years before that. The
7:25wheel was one of the last major
7:26transportation inventions, not the
7:28first. And it didn't even start as
7:30transportation. The first wheels were
7:31for pottery, a spinning disc to shape
7:33clay. At some point, somebody looked at
7:35that disc and turned it on its side.
7:36What if you put something on top of it?
7:38The first wheeled vehicles were slow,
7:39solid wood wheels, heavy. They cracked
7:41on rough ground and got stuck in mud. A
7:43horse without a cart was honestly faster
7:45than a horse with one. But around 2000
7:47BC, someone figured out the spoked
7:49wheel. Lighter and stronger and way
7:51faster. And now you had chariots. Speed
7:53and cargo at the same time. Roads came
7:55after that. The first paved road we know
7:57of went down in the city of Ur around
7:594000 BC. And once you had wheels and
8:02roads and horses all working together,
8:04you finally had something that looked
8:05like a real transportation system. Trade
8:07exploded. Empires became possible. You
8:09could move armies and supplies hundreds
8:11of miles without everything falling
8:12apart. The wheel, the horse, the road.
8:14That combination is what built every
8:15civilization you've ever heard of. So,
8:17here's the full picture. For 300,000
8:20years, humans had nothing but their legs
8:21and they walked across the entire
8:23planet. They hit water and figured out
8:24how to float. They needed to carry more
8:26so they learned to drag. Then they built
8:27frame. Then they partnered with animals.
8:29They figured out the horse and the world
8:30got smaller overnight. They invented the
8:32wheel and it got smaller again. Every
8:34one of those breakthroughs took
8:35thousands of years and every one was
8:37built on top of what came before it.
8:39Solving problems that would have seemed
8:40impossible to anyone who came before.
8:42Now you sit in a metal box on a paved
8:44road doing 70 and you call it a commute.
8:46You fly 3000 miles across an ocean in 6
8:49hours and you're annoyed the Wi-Fi is
8:51slow. You've got a machine in your
8:52pocket that can summon a car to your
8:53exact location in 4 minutes and you're
8:55irritated it takes five. Your ancestors
8:58walked barefoot for 15,000 miles across
9:00continents they couldn't name to reach
9:01places they'd never seen. And they did
9:03it because they had to. Because staying
9:05still meant dying. We solved the problem
9:07of distance so completely that we forgot
9:09it was ever a problem. Every highway,
9:11every airport, every set of train tracks
9:13on this planet exists because 300,000
9:15years ago someone looked at the horizon
9:17and started walking. They didn't know
9:18where they were going. They went anyway.
9:20And that's the most human thing there
9:21is.