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The Human Story is a series of short films that takes one ordinary question — why we blush, why we kiss, what people ate before farming — and follows it to the evidence. Most films run under five minutes; the longest are around seven to eleven. The written answers live on this blog, where the sources behind each article are listed, and the archive is still being filled in.

This page is the guided route: what the series is, which film to watch first, and how the three threads fit together.

What this series is, and is not

It is a question-driven explainer series. Each episode starts with something you have probably wondered about for five seconds and never looked up, then spends the rest of the film on what research actually says — including the parts where the answer is "we do not know yet".

It is not a documentary about a subject in general. There is no episode on "the Stone Age"; there is an episode on what people did when they got sick before there were doctors. The narrower the question, the more the evidence can actually answer it.

The recommended order

You do not have to follow this, but the series reads better in this sequence:

1. Start with one short film in the thread you already care about. Each of the three threads stands on its own — pick the question that made you click.
2. Then watch one film from a thread you would not normally choose. The point of the series is that the same habits of evidence apply to bones, to behaviour and to institutions.
3. Read the written version, if the film has one. The article carries the numbers, the sources and the parts that did not fit in the narration — that is where the citations are.
4. Only then use the topic pages to go deeper, because they are lists, not starting points.

If you want a single pair to test the series with: They Buried Two Children With 13,000 Ivory Beads. Why? for Human Origins, and Why Do We Kiss? for Body & Behavior.

The three threads

Every article and film belongs to one of these. The topic pages are built from labels, so they list everything in that thread, newest first.

Human Origins

Who we were before writing, farming and cities. Burials, teeth, healed bone, stone tools — the physical record of people who left no text. Start at Human Origins.

Body & Behavior

The ordinary things your body does and the reasons behind them: kissing, blushing, crying, sleeping, feeling embarrassed. Most of this sits at the meeting point of evolution, physiology and psychology. Start at Body & Behavior.

Civilization

How the systems around us were built — cities, writing, money, law, libraries — and what they cost the people inside them. Start at Civilization.

Why the blog exists next to the videos

A film can show you a mechanism; it cannot give you a bibliography. Where an article exists for a film, that article is where each claim is tied to a source, where the numbers are written down, and where corrections are recorded. The films reach you first; the written archive fills in behind them.

If you want to know how those rules are applied — including where the narration and illustrations come from — read About.

Stay in touch

New films are published on the channel first, and their articles follow here: @TheQuestionArchive on YouTube. Subscribing there is the only way to be notified when a new question is answered.

Corrections and questions are welcome on any article or video; the Contact page explains the fastest routes.