00:00 hi I'm John Green this is Crash Course
00:01 big history and today we're going to
00:02 talk about the anthropos Mr Green Mr
00:04 Green anthropos what does that even mean
00:06 that sounds like gibberish no me from
00:08 the past your 10th grade essays were
00:10 gibberish the anthropos is a word
00:11 derived from the Greek word for human
00:13 like you know how anthropologists study
00:15 humans well the anthropos scene is an
00:17 unofficial geologic era where humans
00:20 have an immense influence over the
00:23 biosphere but I want to emphasize that
00:24 it is unofficial because geologists are
00:26 a vicious and terrifying bunch and the
00:28 word is not official until they say it's
00:30 official but even if it's not yet a word
00:31 the underlying concept is very useful so
00:34 due to the intensification of collective
00:35 learning and the continued rise of
00:37 complexity we've been talking about you
00:39 could argue that more change has
00:41 happened in the past Century than in the
00:43 previous like 250,000 years of human
00:46 history and it's all roughly within
00:48 living memory you your parents and your
00:50 grandparents have lived in one of the
00:51 most complex and interesting times
01:03 so since 1800 we've had a Cambrian
01:06 explosion of innovation and Discovery
01:07 like in the last few years alone we've
01:09 discovered a fundamental particle that
01:11 weaves together the fabric of the
01:13 universe the higs Bon we discovered the
01:15 largest ever black hole which is about
01:16 17 billion times the mass of our sun we
01:19 found preserved woolly mammoth blood we
01:21 even have electric cars that go more
01:23 than5 mph although you should drive them
01:26 more slowly obviously we've grown to a
01:28 population of 7 billion people and your
01:30 phone has more computing power than all
01:33 of NASA did when they sent men to the
01:34 moon in 1969 and collective learning is
01:37 increasing exponentially here's Emily
01:39 Grassley from the brain scoop to help us
01:41 understand the scale of that growth of
01:43 knowledge as human populations grow
01:45 exponentially collective learning is
01:47 undergoing a snowball effect in
01:49 Humanity's first 250,000 years as
01:52 foragers about 9 billion people lived
01:54 and died thanks to agriculture in the
01:56 last Thousand Years about 55 billion
01:59 people have lived and died and 7 billion
02:01 of them are around now this is great for
02:03 Rising complexity we now live in a
02:05 unified Global Network of billions of
02:07 brains communication is almost
02:09 instantaneous and we harness the power
02:11 of the Earth and Sun on a massive scale
02:14 the potential for new breakthroughs in
02:16 technology or in our understanding of
02:17 the cosmos is heightened by all of this
02:19 it's all part of the continuous Rising
02:21 complexity in big history a trend that
02:23 has been preceding for over 13.8 billion
02:26 years from gas clouds to stars to single
02:29 cell organisms to trilobites to
02:31 dinosaurs to culture the beginnings of
02:33 the anthropos scine weren't all sunshine
02:35 and daisies however the late 19th
02:37 century was marked by an increase in the
02:38 destructiveness of Weaponry a number of
02:40 colonial empires covered the entire
02:42 Earth with the exception of a few
02:44 non-european states which managed to
02:46 maintain their independence and mounting
02:48 nationalism and bigotry led to some
02:50 terrible chaos in the early 20th century
02:53 World War One killed 15 million people
02:55 the Spanish Flu which followed it and
02:57 spread largely as a result of the
02:59 unified global system that had
03:00 previously been so valuable to
03:02 collective learning killed off three
03:03 times as many and 50 million people were
03:06 killed during World War II such is the
03:08 devastating cost of increased Innovation
03:10 and connectivity following World War II
03:11 a new wave of industrialization entered
03:13 East Asia Central and South America the
03:15 Middle East and other areas newly
03:17 developed crops especially strains of
03:19 Wheat and rice helped places like India
03:21 and China which in the mid 20th century
03:23 still suffered famines their populations
03:25 exploded for better or worse and we
03:27 harnessed the power of atomic fion
03:29 putting immense power in the hands of
03:31 humans to be used for good or ill it's
03:34 the threat of nuclear Holocaust combined
03:35 with the possibility of an asteroid
03:37 impact or super volcanic eruption that
03:39 Mak scientists like Steph Hawking
03:40 encourage the colonization of the solar
03:42 system to increase the chances of our
03:45 species surviving coping with scarcity
03:47 is the bottom line of much of organic
03:49 history encompassing all species
03:51 including humans so for most of human
03:53 history the world was separated into
03:54 four isolated zones The Agrarian
03:57 communities within those zones were
03:58 largely subdivided divided into separate
04:00 social orders and classes and varying
04:02 degrees of wealth and the number of the
04:04 wealthy landed gentry and Aristocrats in
04:07 the average agrarian civilization
04:08 whether it was mugal India or Louis the
04:11 14th France was between 10 and 20% of
04:14 the total population so at most 20% of
04:17 people were not poor today in a United
04:20 global system I mean except for North
04:22 Korea if you earn more than roughly
04:24 $20,000 per year as most working adults
04:26 in the developed world do you are in the
04:28 top 20% of the world's richest people
04:30 you are part of the global aristocracy
04:33 but I should note that a couple things
04:34 definitely have changed for one thing if
04:36 you're part of the global aristocracy
04:38 you are enjoying a standard of living
04:40 better than what Kings had only a couple
04:42 centuries ago you probably have a
04:43 refrigerator you flip a switch and the
04:45 lights come on you have antibiotics at
04:47 least for a few more years I mean
04:49 admittedly Netflix doesn't have any of
04:50 the good movies but that's still a
04:52 better entertainment option than what
04:53 Louis V 14th had all he had was public
04:55 executions and hopefully the average
04:57 person in the developed world today is a
04:59 little more enlightened about the
05:01 challenges of poverty than an 18th
05:03 century Aristocrat would have been but
05:05 the jury is still out on that one I mean
05:07 that's why first world problems is a
05:08 meme right but how we behave toward the
05:11 developing world in the next 100 years
05:13 will determine much of how we are viewed
05:15 not only by them but by the thousands of
05:17 future Generations that come after us
05:20 and read of our deeds in history so is
05:22 human history a story of progress where
05:25 life has become better for most people
05:27 over the course of 250,000 years and
05:29 will life continue to get better for
05:30 most people during the anthropos scine
05:32 we're going to try to answer that by
05:33 looking at the anthropos scine in light
05:35 and shade which is basically just a list
05:37 of pros and cons Pro since 1970
05:40 manufacturing jobs have lifted
05:41 approximately 600 million people out of
05:43 poverty modern Technologies can now feed
05:46 and clothe More Humans than ever before
05:48 con more people in the developing world
05:50 are forced from traditional ways of life
05:52 and into factory jobs with poor safety
05:54 standards long hours and measly wages
05:57 and a lot of the goods that they produce
05:58 go overseas to enhance the standard of
06:00 living of a prosperous and Wealthy
06:02 developed world and while the ratio of
06:04 impoverished to wealthy countries in
06:06 1820 was about 3 to1 today it's closer
06:09 to 72 to1 standards of living may be
06:12 increasing on average but the wealth
06:13 inequality Gap is getting wider and
06:16 wider but Pro we have managed to harness
06:19 a lot of energy our use of coal and oil
06:22 and nuclear power these energy flows
06:24 have allowed us to generate an
06:25 astounding amount of complexity in our
06:27 little corner of the universe and
06:28 improve people's standards of living
06:30 yeah but KH current modes of production
06:32 rely heavily on non-renewable resources
06:35 that are not great for the environment
06:37 unless you've been hiding under a rock
06:38 for the past 20 years you will probably
06:40 have heard of climate change and the
06:42 potentially devastating effects it will
06:44 have furthermore as Humanity continues
06:46 to force the environment to adapt to our
06:48 needs we are accelerating the rate of
06:50 Extinction of plant and animal species
06:52 that don't happen to be useful to us one
06:54 of the reasons we call this period the
06:55 anthropos scene is if Humanity were to
06:57 suddenly disappear and Aliens were to
06:59 land land on Earth 500 million years
07:01 later and start Excavating even if they
07:03 saw no sign of the humans on the fossil
07:05 record they would see a mass extinction
07:06 event rivaling the five most devastating
07:08 mass extinctions in prehuman history Pro
07:11 Collective learnings advances in
07:13 medicine Agriculture and genetic
07:14 engineering have in the past 200 years
07:16 lowered the death rate and freed
07:18 billions of people from the cycles of
07:20 starvation and famine that affected
07:22 agrarian civilizations con the
07:24 tremendous expansion of populations in
07:26 India and China have created a severe
07:28 problem for the infrastructures of those
07:30 countries we now have 7 billion people
07:32 on Earth and will grow to between 9.6
07:33 and 12 billion later in the century yet
07:35 at our current rates of consumption and
07:37 modes of production the world could only
07:39 support a population of two or three
07:40 billion people who enjoy the same
07:42 standard of living as people in the
07:44 United States do China's population May
07:46 level off by around 2050 India's might
07:49 level off by 2070 but subsaharan Africa
07:51 a region of the world that already
07:53 suffers from the highest levels of
07:54 poverty and is least equipped to deal
07:56 with problems of overpopulation is set
07:58 to expand enormously even past the year
08:01 2100 add to this the likelihood that
08:03 climate change will reduce the amount of
08:05 aable crop land on the Earth by 10 to
08:07 25% and we may have a severe population
08:10 problem on our hands and as we can see
08:11 from the population cycles of The
08:13 Agrarian period overpopulation tends to
08:15 spark more violence Pro in the long term
08:18 development of a country's economy tends
08:19 to change demographic Trends while an
08:22 agrarian civilization benefited greatly
08:23 from a farmer having half a dozen kids
08:25 first to combat the high infam mortality
08:27 rate and second because by the time they
08:29 were 12 they could help out at the farm
08:31 today kids take 18 to 22 years to
08:34 educate and they're expensive also
08:36 adults end up having other opportunities
08:38 open to them fewer kids more hours on
08:40 the Xbox are pursuing a law degree or a
08:42 highflying business career whatever
08:44 Economic Development can slow population
08:46 growth and many of the developed regions
08:48 of the world populations are stabilizing
08:50 which is why it is important to Foster
08:52 economic growth in places like
08:53 subsaharan Africa KH but what drives a
08:56 lot of that economic growth energy
08:58 production and developing countries are
09:00 more prone to use inexpensive fast and
09:02 dirty forms of fuel to develop rather
09:04 than more expensive eco-friendly
09:06 Alternatives this compounds the
09:07 environmental problem which in turn can
09:09 mess up the environment and compound the
09:11 population problem so it turns out it's
09:14 complicated and we are a little bit
09:15 ambivalent about the anthropos in The
09:18 Next Century Humanity's population
09:19 growth will continue but it'll hopefully
09:22 level off between 10 and 12 billion
09:24 people due to declining birth rates if
09:26 it doesn't we might be in trouble well
09:28 we'll definitely be in trouble at some
09:30 point we just don't know when but even
09:31 if it does level off we've still got
09:33 problems concerning how to support all
09:35 those people at a decent standard of
09:37 living and how to find the energy to
09:39 fuel that process I mean we're talking
09:41 about between 10 and 12 billion people
09:43 the first time the world's population
09:45 got to 1 billion humans was 1804 so
09:49 right now we're still heavily dependent
09:51 on non-renewable fossil fuels well
09:53 technically they are renewable but you
09:55 need like a 100 million years but there
09:57 are a few possible future scenarios one
09:59 we are miraculously saved by some
10:01 technology in the same way that the
10:03 Industrial Revolution lifted Humanity
10:05 out of the recurring cycles of famine in
10:07 The Agrarian era two we collapse
10:09 miserably into ruins and Ashes I don't
10:11 like two St is there an option three
10:12 well there is that's good news three we
10:14 can guide Human Society into a creative
10:17 descent a gentle decline of complexity
10:19 to more simple subsistence living
10:21 actually you know what I'm not crazy
10:23 about three either I am all for one now
10:26 at present we don't know what scenario
10:27 will play out we're acting as if we will
10:29 be saved by some technology and in fact
10:31 that's the only way that leads to the
10:33 continuing rise of complexity but we
10:35 can't just assume that we happen and as
10:37 for the potential dangers of the 21st
10:39 century there are environmental
10:41 disasters the rise of a super buug that
10:43 wipes out Millions upon millions of
10:45 people possible global conflict or a
10:47 rise in instability the next 50 years
10:50 will be Frau with a lot of risk but if
10:52 we can somehow make it through what some
10:54 call the 21st century bottleneck things
10:56 start to brighten again we'll be a
10:58 stable population of 10 to 12 billion
11:00 increasingly well educated and
11:02 interconnected innovators and that's
11:04 great for collective learning in the
11:05 21st century who knows where such
11:07 massive potential could lead it's
11:09 important to remember that while there
11:10 are 7 billion people in the world right
11:12 now many of them don't have access to
11:14 good education and that limits their
11:15 Innovative potential if in the future we
11:17 see less poverty as we've seen in the
11:19 last 20 years and more access to
11:22 education I'm kind of hopeful as far as
11:25 we know we are unique in the universe
11:27 and if for nothing else it is our duty
11:30 to our own innate curiosity to survive
11:33 and to see where this Rising complexity
11:35 leads our task as a species in this
11:38 century is to survive it if we can just
11:40 manage that from the end of the 21st
11:42 century the universe may take us in a
11:44 thousand astonishing directions more on
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