2001 a space odyssey

Travelled through space and time to explore the multiverse and is in a white room with old style furniture, as he begins exploring he doesn't know what happened. He looks in a mirror and begins to hear somebody breathing heavily and goes to investigate only to find                                

There is a monolith in the room with an eery silence which is non-diegetic.

He touched the monolith which turned him into a foetus and sent him back to Earth. 

The scene was described by Kubrick as a human zoo as zoos are decorated strangely and It gave the idea that Kubrick wanted to see if humans evolution was controlled by a high being, as in the opening scene the apes were only able to use tools after touching the monolith.