On this episode of Unsupervised Learning, Razib talks about the rise of modern humans, from their beginning as just one population among a diverse set of human species, to the dominant and only remaining lineage of hominids in the present. His reflections are colored by paleontological findings and begin with the evolution of modern humans and their distinctive physical characteristics in Africa more than 200,000 years ago, then moving on to their breakout from the ancestral continent and the disappearance of Neanderthals. It is at this point that, 50,000 years ago, ancient DNA findings and statistical genomics shape the rest of the story, as the net of modern human expansion pushes to every corner of Eurasia, and eventually makes the leap to Oceania and the New World.    Razib discusses the human phylogenetic tree, and how different populations relate to each other, but also explores the graph of relationships that illustrate how they have mixed. He also discusses the impact of the arrival of modern humans on local ecologies, as megafauna extinctions seem to correspond with the appearance of our species in Australia and the New World. Finally, he relates diverse contemporary populations to their prehistoric antecedents, outlining how the people we know today arrived at their current locations and who their ancestors were.

Archaeologist Eric Cline and Razib delve into the collapse of civilizations post-1177 B.C., discussing new technologies reshaping our historical understanding. They cover the disintegration of ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, the resilience of Egypt, and the impact of network collapse on societies. The conversation touches on historical revisionism, adaptation, and the importance of knowledge in shaping our perspectives of the past and future.

Razib, founder of GenRAIT, and his team discuss using technology to drive science, including the intersection of data-driven approaches and life sciences, the effective utilization of language models, the role of humans in healthcare and AI applications, and understanding artificial intelligence (AI) and its capabilities.