Humans first evolved in Africa some 200,000 years ago. For about 130,00 of those years, not much happened. Then, sometime around 70,000 years ago, the Earth became less hospitable due to an ice age and drought, perhaps due to volcanic eruptions. Species homo sapiens was on the brink of extinction with some 2,000 individuals left. Perhaps only the most intelligent and adaptable were left to repopulate. Maybe what happened next was a leap forward in evolution.
After the near extinction, tools and weapons began to improve. The first evidence of art is seen. Humans began to move out of Africa and colonize the rest of the world. By 15,000 years ago, this naked ape that had evolved in a tropical ecosystem was able to follow and successfully hunt creatures much larger than itself through what is now Siberia, creatures much better adapted to the cold. Homo sapiens entered the Americas, and now lived on every continent but Antarctica.
Some 10,000 years ago, in a different part of the world, humans began experimenting with writing, mathematics, animal husbandry, agriculture, and the building of cities.
Skip forward 8 or 9 thousand years, and we see science beginning to supplant superstition as a way to understand the world. We begin to see microscopes for looking at the invisibly tiny, and telescopes to view the invisibly far away.
Skip forward a few hundred more years, and humans have invented machines that develop their own power. For the first time, we're not confined to muscle power to generate energy.
A few more decades, now, and we have heavier than air flight and iron rails that span a continent.
Five decades after the first flight, the first artificial satellite flew into space, and just 12 years later, men walked on the moon.
Soon after that, the world was connected by the information super highway. Within a few years, this new technology had circled the globe.
The first great events are separated by tens of thousands of years, then by thousands of years, then by hundreds of years, then by decades, then by years.
So, what's next? Where does homo sapiens go from here?