Discipline
Biology
Lessons across the journey that lean on biology, in the order they appear in the story.
- 5.1 What is life?Planned
Definitions of life, and the last universal common ancestor of everything alive today.
- 5.2 How chemistry became biologyDraft
The hypotheses and evidence for the origin of life.
- 5.3 Evolution by natural selectionPlanned
The mechanism, stated precisely, and the evidence that it works.
- 5.4 The Great Oxidation EventPlanned
How microbes remade the planet's atmosphere.
- 5.5 The complex cellPlanned
Endosymbiosis and the origin of the eukaryotic cell.
- 5.6 The Cambrian explosionPlanned
Animal body plans appear in the fossil record.
- 5.7 Mass extinctionsPlanned
Five great dyings and the age of reptiles.
- 5.8 Mammals in the shadowsDraft
How small mammals survived the dinosaurs and inherited the Earth.
- 6.1 Primates and homininsDraft
The family tree from the first primates to the hominins.
- 6.2 From habilis to sapiensDraft
Homo habilis, Homo erectus and the arrival of our species.
- 6.3 Fire, tools and cookingPlanned
Stone tools, controlled fire and the cooking hypothesis.
- 6.4 Language and symbolic thoughtPlanned
The evidence for language and the first art.
- 6.5 Collective learningPlanned
Why humans, alone among species, accumulate knowledge across generations.
- 6.7 Foraging lifewaysPlanned
How people lived for most of human history.
- 9.4 Editing lifePlanned
Biotechnology, from vaccines to gene editing, and what it means to steer evolution on purpose.