Book Summary:
This book is an examination of the developments and trends that lead to humans being the dominate species on earth.
Related Book Summaries:
Antifragile – Nicholas Nassim Taleb – Book Summary
The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell – Book Summary
Quotes:
History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.
Biology enables, culture forbids.
Book Summary Notes:
- Humans first appeared almost 2.5 million years ago in eastern Africa. We evolved from the genus of great apes called Australopithecus.
- We eventually migrated from east Africa and began adapting to other environments.
- 300,000 years ago the first Homo sapiens appeared and began to prosper.
- Two theories arose for why we became so dominant. The first was the theory of interbreeding, suggesting that we began to co-mingle our DNA with that of other groups that evolved from the same ancestors and eventually we all became one group. Theory one is supported by remnants of other DNA in some modern day groups of humans.
- The second theory, the replacement theory, suggests that we pushed other human species into extinction through taking their resources or simply by killing them.
- The correct theory most likely lies somewhere between the two.
- The cognitive revolution is a period of time where the brains of Homo sapiens went through some incredible changes. The revolution lead to a significant improvement in brain capabilities which directly contributed to Homo sapiens being able to out perform our rivals.
- This also led to us colonising the entire globe and leaving a trail of extinctions behind us.
- One of our greatest achievements was the development of our complex languages. As we are such a social group, language allows information to be more easily spread throughout our groups.
- Some other animals operate in groups but none to the same degree as humans.
- Language also allowed us to gradually expand the size of our groups. Moving from towns to cities to states.
- Our next revolution, the agricultural revolution occurred about 12,000 years ago and allowed us to begin to exponentially expand our population size.
- To facilitate trade we invented money and writing.
- As societies and populations grew, laws became necessary to regulate behaviours and introduced systems of authority to help enforce them.
- The scientific revolution was next and lead to huge advances in areas such as medicine and physics. This in turn led to lower mortality rates among babies and longer life spans for everyone.
