hi, you’re on a rock floating in space. pretty cool, huh? some of it’s water. fuck it. actually, most of it’s water. i can’t even get from here to there without buying a boat. it’s sad. i’m sad. i miss you.

#HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

a long time ago… actually, never. and also now. nothing is nowhere. when? never. makes sense, right? like i said, it didn’t happen. nothing was never anywhere. that’s why it’s been everywhere. it’s been so “everywhere,” you don’t need a “where.” you don’t even need a “when.” that’s how “every” it gets.

forget this. i wanna be something. go somewhere. do something. i want things to change. i want to invent time and space. and i know it’s possible because everything is here, and it probably already happened. i just don’t know when to start.

and that’s exactly where it started.

big bang— pause

woah. i paused it. i think there’s a universe now. what’s it made of? quarks and stuff. ah, that’s a thing! in a place! don’t like it? try a new place, at a different Time™. try to stick together, because the world is gonna get bigger and emptier. but it’s not empty yet! it’s still very full, and about a kjghpillion degrees.

about no seconds later

great news! the quarks are now happily married in groups of three, called a “proton” and a “neutron.” and there’s something else flying around that wants to join in, but can’t cause it’s too HOT.

ten minutes later

great news! the protons and neutrons are now happily married to each other! some of them even doubled up.

about 380,000 years later

great news! the electrons have now joined in. congratulations! the world is now… a bunch of gas in space. but it’s getting closer together…

ten million years later

and it’s getting closer together…

500 million years later

and it’s getting closer togeth—

star is born

it’s a star

new shit just got made!

some stars burn out and die. bigger stars burn out and die with passion! and make some brand new way crazier shit.

space dust!

which allows for newer and more interesting stars to be made, and then die and explode into even crazier space dust!

so now, stars have cool stuff around them, like rocks, ice, and funny clouds, which can make some very interesting things. like this ball of flaming rocks, for example.

meteor hits earth

holy shit, we just got hit by another ball of flaming rocks. and it kind of… made a mess. which is now the moon

weather update: it’s raining rocks from outer space.

weather update: those rocks might’ve had water inside of them and now there’s hot steam in the sky.

weather update: cooler temperatures today and the floor is no longer lava.

weather update… it’s raining.

severe flooding alert, the entire world is now an ocean.

volcano alert.

that’s land!

there’slifeintheocean

what?

something’s alive in the ocean

oh, cool. like a plant, or an animal? no! a microscopic speck. it lives in the bottom of the ocean and eats chemical soup, which is being served hot and fresh, made from gnarly space ingredients left over from when it was raining rocks or whatever.

microscopic speck asexually reproduces

oh yeah, and it can do that.

reproduces three more times

it has secret instructions written inside itself telling it how to build another one of itself. so that’s pretty nifty, i would say.

tired of living at the bottom of the ocean?

now you can eat sunlight!

using a revolutionary technique, you can convert sunlight into food.

taste the sun!

side effect, now there’s oxygen everywhere and the sky is blue.

then the earth might’ve been a snowball for a while. maybe even a couple of times.

it’s a sponge… it’s a plant… it’s a worm, and some other types of weird strange water bugs and strange fish.

it’s the Cambrian explosion: “wow, that’s animals and stuff”

but we’re still in the ocean. hey, can we go on land?

NO

why?

the sun is a deadly laser

oh okay.

not anymore, there’s a blanket

now the animals can go on land. come on, animals, let’s go on land!

“nope, can’t walk yet.”

“and there’s no food yet, so i don’t care.”

100 million years later

okay, will you learn to walk if there’s plants up here?

“maybe,” said some bugs. and fish.

fish gasps for air

five million years later

okay, so i can go on land, but i have to go back in the water to have babies!

idea: learn to use an egg.

“i was already doing that”

use a stronger egg. put water in it. have a baby, on land, in an egg. water is in the egg. baby, in the egg, in the water, in the egg.

works for me. bye bye ocean

50 million years later

and now everything’s huge. including bugs.

wanna see a map of the land? sure.

Permian extinction

oh, fuck, now everything’s dead.

just kidding, here are the survivors. keep your eye on this one, because it’s about to become

75 million years later

the dinosaurs.

here’s another map of the land. yeah, it broke apart. don’t worry about it, it does that all the time. here comes a meteor.

meteor strikes

and the dinosaurs are gone

it’s mammal time, here come the mammals. look at those breasts.

now they’re gonna dominate the world, but one of them just learned how to grab stuff. and walk. no, like, walk like that. and grab stuff at the same time. and bang rocks together to make pointed rocks.

“ouch”

and set things on fire.

“yeouch”

and make crazy sounds with their voice:

“gneurshk”

which can mean different things.

that’s a human person!

and now they’re everywhere. almost.

ice age!

what? you can walk over here? cool.

not anymore

well i guess we’re stuck here now.

let’s review: there’s people on the planet. and they’re chasing their food.

fuck it. time to plant some grass.

look at this. i get to control the food now. now everyone will want to be my friend and live near me. let’s all build houses, except mine is bigger because i own the food.

this is great! i wonder if anyone else is doing this.

tired of using rocks for everything? use metal. it’s underground.

better farming was just invented in a sweet dank valley right in between these two rivers, and the animals are helping.

guess what happens next?

more food. and more people, who came to buy the food. now you need people to help make the food and keep track of the sales. and now you need houses for people to live in and people to make the houses and now there’s more people and they invent things which makes things better and more people come and there’s more farming and more people to make more things for more people and now there’s business, money, writing, laws, power,

Society

coming soon to a dank river valley near you.

meanwhile, out in the middle of nowhere, the horse is probably being tamed.

why is all my metal so lame and lumpy?

tired of using lame, sad metal? introducing: bronze. made from special ingredient tin from the far lands of Tin Land. i dunno, my dealer won’t tell me where he gets it. also, guess what?

egypt

meanwhile, out in the middle of nowhere, they figured out how to put wheels on a horse. now we’re getting somewhere. also,

china

and did i mention

indus river valley civilization

society count: 5

…

norte chico

the middle east is getting more complicated. maybe because it’s in the middle of the east.

knock knock, er, clop clop. it’s the… people with the horses? and they made an empire. and then everyone else copied their horses.

greeks!

ah look, it must be the greeks! er, a beta version of the greeks.

let’s check in with the indus river valley civilization: they’re gone. guess who’s not gone? china.

new arrivals from india… maybe it’s those horse people i was talking about… or their cousins or something…

and they wrote some hymns and mantras and stuff…

you could make a religion out of this.

there’s the bronze age collapse.

now the phoenicians can get down to business

also, can we switch to a metal that’s a little easier to find? thanks.

look who came back to israel, it’s the twelve tribes of israel.

and they believe in God

just one though, and he’s got like a ten-step program.

here’s some huge heads. must be the olmecs.

the phoenicians make some colonies. the greeks copy their idea and make some colonies. the phoenicians made a colony so big it makes colonies.

here comes the assyrian empire. never mind, it’s the babyloni— media—

it’s the Persian Empire: “wow, that’s big”

enlightenment

ah, the buddha was just enlightened. who’s the buddha? this guy, who sat under a tree for so long that he figured out how to ignore the fact that we’re all dying. you could make a religion out of that.