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  • Time makes sense in small pieces.

  • But when you look at huge stretches of time, it's almost impossible to wrap your head around things.

  • So let's start small with minutes, hours, days.

  • You probably spent the last 24 hours mostly sleeping and working and you probably wasted a good chunk of

  • yesterday on the Internet.

  • Days become weeks weeks become months and then we have a year.

  • Let's look at 2017

  • France started to train eagles to hunt terrorist drones.

  • A Czech nuclear power plant held a bikini contest to pick their new intern.

  • and people on the Internet made a challenge out of eating bleach. You know, the usual stuff.

  • Let's go back further...

  • A kid born in the first year of the 21st century is 18 years old now.

  • But the century is still young even if you're not.

  • It was largely shaped by the attacks on 9/11 which led to the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq.

  • In March 2011 the Syrian civil war began and is still ongoing after seven years.

  • Most of us were born in the 20th century.

  • Which had the two most devastating wars in human history and the Cold War.

  • For the first time ever, we could destroy ourselves with the nuclear weapons, and we almost did.

  • But we also had a space race and left earth for the first time.

  • The internet was also invented which led to memes but also to Facebook and Twitter.

  • So all in all we're not sure if this was a good development.

  • The average human lives about 79 years, which covers a good chunk of recent history.

  • The oldest living person on earth is currently Celino Jaramillo, who was born in 1896.

  • Which means that his birth was closer to Napoleon ruling Europe than to the current day.

  • Only 250 years ago the Industrial Revolution.

  • Turned the world into a progress machine. The farmers became workers and knowledge became easier to distribute.

  • Around this time we started the progress that is causing climate change today.

  • Not that long ago actually.

  • The theory of evolution changed how we saw ourselves and the world we live in.

  • Newton wrote down his theory of gravity. We discovered distant stars and very close bacteria.

  • The 15th century was very eventful.

  • Columbus's discovery of america and the fall of Constantinople marked the end of the Middle Ages.

  • War was all the rage in the Middle Ages.

  • But the number one killer was disease. The Black Plague killed every third European in just six years.

  • Around 2,000 years ago, we set the arbitrary year one of our calendar that most of the world follows today.

  • But to a Roman the world was already ancient.

  • The great pyramids were constructed

  • 4500 years ago. So, to a Roman, the pyramids were older than the Romans are to us today.

  • so long ago that there was still living mammoths on earth.

  • A lot of history happened before that even around 7,000 years ago humans began writing things down.

  • About 12000 years ago human organization exploded.

  • We built our first temple and around the world mankind began farming

  • Which enabled the rise of larger communities. Our dominance over planet Earth really begins here.

  • Homo sapiens sapiens, the modern human, evolved at least 200,000 years ago.

  • 50000 years ago the cognitive revolution expanded our minds and innovation.

  • Back then, we shared earth with at least five other human species that either died out or were killed by us.

  • At least 2 million years ago, our ancestors already had control over fire and constructed tools from wood and stone.

  • And six million years ago, the last common ancestors of chimpanzees and humans existed.

  • So this graph is all of human history.

  • Our close relative, Homo erectus, survived 10 times longer than we have existed.

  • This tiny part is the human era. We have to zoom in a lot to even see your lifetime.

  • Still, all of human history is not that long.

  • 65 million years ago the age of the dinosaurs ended in an enormous explosion.

  • The dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 165 million years.

  • 27 times as long as all humans.

  • That's so long that it means a T-rex that lived at 65 million years ago is closer to us today

  • than to a live Stegosaurus.

  • Dinosaurs in the form of mighty chickens are still around today.

  • Animal life on this planet started 600 million years ago.

  • The earliest animals were fish and other small simple sea creatures. Then came insects, then reptiles.

  • And finally, around 200 million years ago, mammals joined the party.

  • Life itself began much further back. There is evidence that it appeared up to 4.1 billion years ago.

  • For at least 3.5 billion years life consisted only of single-celled organisms.

  • 4.5 billion years ago, the Sun was born from a gigantic imploding gas cloud. 60 million years later, earth formed

  • In those early years, frequent bombardment by comets and asteroids supplied the earth with large oceans.

  • But as far as the whole universe goes, our solar system is pretty new.

  • Thirteen point seven five billion years ago, the universe was born.

  • And about half a billion years later, our own galaxy formed from billions of stars.

  • But what came before the Big Bang? The truth is we don't know and maybe we never will.

  • And there you have it: The past.

  • Now let's take a look at what we know about the future.

  • In roughly 1 billion years, the Sun will be so hot that life on Earth becomes impossible. The death of the Sun 4 billion years later

  • marks the end of life in the solar system.

  • If we want to have a chance to survive, we need to have ventured to the Stars. And what happens after that?

  • In the next 100 billion years, most of the biggest stars around will die. The universe becomes dimmer and dimmer

  • illuminated only by smaller red and white dwarfs.

  • But they too will eventually burn out and one day, the last star in the universe will die.

  • The universe will turn dark and at some point even black holes will evaporate and die.

  • When they do our universe will reach its final stage: Heat death.

  • Nothing changes anymore; the universe is dead.

  • Forever.

  • Now, you're feeling some pretty weird feelings right now, aren't you? We are too. It's only natural.

  • The good news is this is all far far away.

  • The only time that actually matters is now.

  • That cute girl or boy you like, ask them out! Time is precious.

  • Make it count.

  • One of the questions we get asked the most is how we make animated videos.

  • The short answer is with Adobe After Effects and years of training.

  • But if you'd like to get a glimpse, we now have something for you.

  • We made Skillshare tutorials explaining in detail how we animate scenes from our videos.

  • If you aren't already familiar with it, Skillshare is an online learning community with more than 18,000 classes in things like writing,

  • animation, and video editing.

  • Their premium membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes from professionals working in their fields so you can improve your skills,

  • unlock new opportunities, and do work that you really enjoy.

  • It's also extremely affordable. The annual subscription is less than ten dollars a month.

  • The first 1,000 people to sign up get their first two months for only 99 cents.

  • So if you want to learn new things and support Kurz Gesagt, give it a try.

  • How did you like this remake? We're thinking about redoing a few of our older videos in the next one or two years.

  • Any videos you would like to see redone?

Time makes sense in small pieces.

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