homo natura

My interest is the creation of the Universe, the formation of the Earth, the evolution of humans and their first societies. In short, life itself, I'm a big history advocate.

[rootsoflife]

Our modern time scale, with a Universe just over 13 billions years old, seems modest in comparison. We can grasp it more easily if we shrink it one billion times, so that the whole history of the Universe can fit just into just 13 years.

On this scale our Earth would have been formed about 5 years ago.

The first multi-celled organisms would have evolved about 7 months ago.

After flourishing for severas weeks the dinosaurs would have been wiped out about 3 weeks ago.

The first hominids would have appeared about 3 days ago, and our own species just 53 minutes ago.

Agriculture started existing 5 minutes ago and the first agricultural civilizations would have appeared just 3 minutes ago.

Modern industrial societies would have existed for just six seconds.

[alphynix]

Kalakocetus aurorae was an early cetacean that lived during the Eocene, about 50-48 million years ago, in what is now the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent.

It represents the (currently) most basal known branch of the whale lineage, with teeth that are transitional between the crushing herbivorous-omnivorous molars of the closely-related raoellids and the shearing carnivorous molars of later archaeocetes.

Only known from a lower jaw and teeth, its full life appearance is unknown — but based on the body proportions of other early cetaceans it would have been a roughly cat-sized animal, around 60cm long (~2'), possibly resembling a smaller version of its better-known relative Pakicetus. It was also probably similarly semiaquatic, wading into rivers to hunt fish and other small freshwater prey.

———

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References:

Gingerich, Philip D., et al. "Astragali of Pakicetidae and other early-to-middle Eocene archaeocetes (Mammalia, Cetacea) of Pakistan: locomotion and habitat in the initial stages of whale evolution." PalZ 91.4 (2017): 601-627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12542-017-0362-8

Waqas, Mohd, et al. "A basal representative of Cetacea from the Eocene of India." Nature Ecology & Evolution (2026): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03055-9

Wikipedia contributors. “Kalakocetus” Wikipedia, 07 Jun. 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalakocetus

Wikipedia contributors. “Pakicetidae” Wikipedia, 07 Jun. 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakicetidae

[rootsoflife]

Map of distribution of Natufian sites found in modern Israel and Palestine. The Natufian Culture (15 000 - 11 500 BCE) was a prehistoric culture with early signs of sedentary lifestyle and has proof of the oldest developments of domestication of plants and dogs, burial of the death, beer-brewing and baking, preceding the rest of West Asia by 4 000 years.

[rootsoflife]

Prehistory as a movement from savagery through barbarism to civilization.

Gosden, C. (2003) Prehistory: A very short introduction. Oxford.

[rootsoflife]

Hannibal Barca's route towards Rome.

[rootsoflife]

The Mediterranean during the Punic Wars

[todays-xkcd]

Geologists claim it's because the earlier Cenozoic used to be called the Tertiary, but that's just a ruse to hide the secret third geologic period, between the Neogene and the Quaternary, that they won't tell us about.

Geologic Periods [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A three-column table denoting "period", "my favorite part", and "my biggest complaint", respectively.]

Precambrian; Life develops; Snowball Earth episodes. Cambrian; Trilobites!; Evolution could stand to calm down a little. Ordovician; Earth might have had rings; Scary volcanic eruption in North America. Silurian; First land animals; Earth's newfound mold problem. Devonian; Big mountains in Boston; Yeah, sure, what those giant killer fish needed was armor. Carboniferous; Cool forests; Bugs too big. Permian; Pangea; Google "The Great Dying". Triassic; Tanystropheus; [Accompanied by a drawing of a long-necked dinosaur.]; Damage to Canada still visible from space at Manicouagan. Jurassic; Birds; Parasitoid wasps. Cretaceous; Raptors; Raptors. Paleogene; Pretty horseys!!!; Paleocene-eocene thermal maximum. Neogene; Forests of Dracaena dragonblood trees; Zanclean flood. Quaternary; Burrito invented; Whoever picked the name for the third period of the Cenozoic.

[dame-nostalgique]

Cool & bizarre crystal textures I captured at Prague National Museum 💎✨

02 XI 2025

[marlynnofmany]

Has Tumblr met Buddo yet?

A little friend-shaped friend made of whale bone, from back in woolly mammoth times.

[lionofchaeronea]

A bull surrounded by archers. Neolithic rock art in the Spanish Levante.

Photo credit: Pouazity3/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

[ofruinsandmyth]

A 4,500-year-old highway network, lined with well-preserved ancient tombs, in Saudi Arabia .

[rootsoflife]

The world divided by Spain and Portugal with papal authority under the Tordesillas Treaty. (1494)

[rootsoflife]

The XVI century is probably one of the most important centuries in worldwide history, it was during this century than the fall of Constantinople and the cut of trade throughout the old silk road lead to the European Empires to seek new trades for commerce with Asia which lead to the conquest of America.

The discovering of the so called New World by the Europeans and the connection of economy and commerce in the whole world started the principles of capitalism and modern history characterized by nation-states and a global dependant economy.

It ended up being brutal for the native people of America and Oceania, it is estimated that by 1500 less than 20% of the world landmass was divided into states run by bureaucrats and government laws, most societies of the world were divided into chiefdoms and tribes, agricultural societies dominated over hunter-gatherers.

1453 and 1492 are probably the most memorable years for all of the history of humanity.

[witch-breaker]

A 130,000 year old Neanderthal found petrified in place, fused to the cave walls by calcite over millennia (Altamura, Italy)

[rootsoflife]

Expected number of billions of people in the world according to a study made by the United Nations in the year 2000.

Source: Paul Kennedy, 1991, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, New York: Ballantine, 23

[rootsoflife]

Topographic map of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

[rootsoflife]

A map of the ancient Near East craddle of the first known civilizations.