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This National Geographic video traces the path of hominids, beginning around 195,000 years ago in the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia. It's a fascinating journey, moving from Africa to Australia, where clicking became the predominant mode of communication. Language began to develop with the emergence of the hyoid bone, which actually forms speech.

Language became the force governing not only the evolution but the survival of the early human. Around 50,-70,000 years back, tool use and language skills combined to create art and society. Those hominids whose genetic code did not contain the capacity for these expressions likely died off (more than a suggestion for the essential value of creativity). This "evolutionary dead end" of the hominids (Neanderthals),has been linked to their inferior thinking ability, dooming their branch of genetic development and opening the path to today's human.

A land mass called Sahul was home to the earliest known human settlements, survivors of the Ice Age, who used tools to clear land. The continent Sahul eventually became the separate countries of Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. Human remains near Lake Mungo, New South Wales, are the earliest found outside Africa. Meanwhile, the hunters in Africa migrated north, tracking mammoth and populating much of Eurasia. To the south, a group of humans were populating caves and perfecting the art of drawing, leaving behind some 400 images of 14 different species of animals, ranging from the rhinoceros to bison.

The migration from Siberia to North America came about 25,000 years back when those mammoth hunters crossed a "land bridge" into Alaska called Beringia. Archaeological finds at cactus Hill, VA, date to 18,000, showing that these hardy predators made their way across the mostly iced-over continent during an extended period lasting around 10,000 years. Over in Europe, the Magdelanian culture was creating advanced tools and investing "substantial time and skill in cultural activities."

Once again, the predominance of creative expression marks an advanced level of culture.

Once the Ice Age receded (5,-10,000 years ago), agriculture began to replace hunting as the primary foundation of culture. Sedentary civilization, trade and artistic endeavors each broadened the degree and strengthened the permanency of these old humans. Goddess worship or matriarchal cultures connected to natural rhythms, was the preeminent structure of many societies.

Flash forward - What will our tracks leave behind to the next eons? Footprints that muddy and desecrate, global capitalism that blithely causes animal extinction? What creative expression will be unearthed? Flash drives loaded with nonsense? Videos of "shock and awe" in which antiquities are destroyed and looted? And what of evolution? Will ethnic cleansing replace the natural patterns of evolutionary survival?