Sapiens

[P]erhaps happiness is synchronising... personal delusions.. with... prevailing collective delusions.

We have... increased food production, built cities, established empires and created... trade networks. But did we decrease... suffering..? ...[M]assive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.

[C]ontradictions are culture’s engines, responsible for... creativity and dynamism... Just as... clashing musical notes... force... music forward.., discord in... thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.

How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? ...[N]ever admit that the order is imagined.

Dualism... has a... simple answer to the... Problem of Evil... Monotheists have to practise intellectual gymnastics to explain... suffering... One... explanation.., [w]ere there no evil, humans could not choose between good and evil.., hence... no free will. Dualisim... is unnerved by the Problem of Order. ...[I]f Good and Evil battle for control... who enforces the laws. [M]onotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. ...[S]olving the riddle: ...there is a single omnipotent God... and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such...

[F]rom a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has... no meaning... the outcome of blind evolutionary processes... without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of... divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up... the universe would... keep going... business as usual. ...[H]uman subjectivity would not be missed. ...[M]eaning ...people ascribe to their lives is... delusion.

[W]e have... made... progress... with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating... and the improvement in... humanity is... fragile...

[T]he modern world fails to square liberty with equality.

In the late nineteenth century... [~]40 million Chinese, a tenth of the... population, were addicts.

For modern Europeans, building an empire was a scientific project...

In laboratories throughout the world, scientists are engineering living beings. They break the laws of natural selection with impunity, unbridled even by an organism's original characteristics.

For the aborigines of Australia, and to a lesser extent for the Maori of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never fully recovered.

The Far East and the Islamic world... between 1500 and 1950... did not produce anything... close to Newtonian physics and Darwinian biology.

Finally, in 1880, the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich. For the first time in history, a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise-to-sunset cycles.

Smith's claim that the selfish human urge... is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary.., not just from an economic... but... more so from a moral and political perspective. ...Smith says.., greed is good, and... by becoming richer I benefit everybody... is altruism.

[T]o understand modern economic history, you need to understand... a single word... growth.

Our... green and blue planet is becoming... concrete and plastic...

Scholars began to study the history of happiness only a few years ago, and we are still formulating initial hypotheses and searching for appropriate research methods.

When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he took 165 scholars.... Among other things, they founded... , and made... contributions to the study of religion, linguistics and botany.

Scientists... are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control... money; many... act out of purely intellectual curiosity. ...[O]nly rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda.

For decades was much more expensive than gold. ...Napoleon III... commissioned cutlery... for... distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold...

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost every important military expedition that left Europe... had on board scientists who set out... to... make scientific discoveries.

Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.

For 2500 years, Buddhists have systematically studied the essence and cause of happiness. which is why there is a growing interest among the scientific community both in their philosophy and their meditation practices.

The capitalist and consumerist ethics are... a merger of commandments. The... rich... 'Invest!' The... rest... 'Buy!'

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.., [~]10 million African slaves were imported to America. ...[~]70 per cent... worked on the s.

Napoleon... [called the British] a nation of shopkeepers. Yet these shopkeepers defeated Napoleon... and their empire was the largest the world has ever seen.

In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf.

Consumerism and nationalism... make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community.., that we... have a common past.., interest and... future. This isn't a lie. It's imagination.

Throughout history, societies have suffered from two kinds of poverty: social poverty... withholds from some... the opportunities available to others; and biological poverty... puts... life... at risk due to lack of food and shelter. Perhaps social poverty can never be eradicated, but in many countries... biological poverty is a thing of the past.

Europeans were used to thinking and behaving in a scientific and capitalist way... before they enjoyed... technological advantage.

California['s] wealth was initially built on gold mines. But today it is... and ― Silicon Valley and the celluloid hills of Hollywood.

The era of personalised medicine... that matches treatment to DNA... has begun.

Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, ... claimed the lives of... [~]2 million sailors. No one knew what caused it...

The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable.

Columbus's fleet... of three small ships manned by 120 sailors... was like a trio of mosquitoes compared to Zheng He's drove of dragons.

Buddha’s recommendation was to stop... the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.

Religious holidays... have become shopping festivals.

[H]ow did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts..? ...[H]umans created imagined orders and devised scripts... The imagined orders sustaining... networks... divided people into [a] make-believe hierarchy. Superiors got... the good things... Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained.

In 1847, British train companies put their heads together and agreed that henceforth all train timetables would be calibrated to Greenwich Observatory time. rather than the local times of Liverpool. Manchester and Glasgow.

Throughout most of history, women were often seen as the property of family or community. Modern states, on the other hand, see women as individuals, enjoying ecconimic and legal rights independently of their family and community.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the... life of most humans ran... within three ancient frames: the nuclear family.., extended family and... local intimate community. ...The family was... the welfare.., health.., education system.., construction industry.., pension fund.., insurance company.., radio.., television.., newspapers.., bank and... police.

[I]f humankind doesn’t annihilate itself... the Scientific Revolution... may turn out to be the most important bological revolution...

Money has been essential both for building empires and for promoting science. Neither modern armies nor university laboratories can be sustained without banks.

The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans... in a series of wars... conquered large parts of Asia.

Seventy thousand years ago, homo sapiens was still an insignificant animal... in... Africa. ...[I]t transformed... into the master of the... planet and... terror of the ecosystem.., on the verge of... eternal youth... [with] divine abilities of creation and destruction.

In the Middle Ages, was a rare luxury in Europe. It was imported from the Middle East at prohibitive prices and used sparingly...

International wars became rare only after 1945, largely thanks to the new threat of nuclear annihilation.

The European imperial expeditions transformed... history... from... isolated peoples and cultures... [to] the history of a single integrated human society.

Obesity is a double victory... [E]ating little... will lead to economic contraction... [E]at too much and... buy diet products - contributing to economic growth twice over.

The annual sugar intake of the average Englishman rose from near zero in the early seventeenth century to around eight kilograms in the early nineteenth century.

When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination... everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people will be living... on Mars and Pluto. ...[N]obody foresaw the Internet.

Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more... as a... positive... It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves.., even kill themselves slowly by .

[T]he Great Survey of India... lasted sixty years. ...[T]he British ...mapped the whole of India, marking borders... and calculating... the... height of Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks.

[T]he Frankenstein story appears to warn... that if we try to... engineer life we will be punished...

[F]or the vast majority of domesticated animals, the Agricultural Revolution was a terrible catastrophe.

Capitalism distinguishes 'capital' from mere 'wealth'. Capital consists of... resources... invested in production. Wealth... is buried... or wasted on unproductive activities.

The Industrial Revolution turned the time table and the assembly line into a template... [S]chools... adopted... timetables, followed by hospitals, government offices and grocery stores. ...[I]n places devoid of assembly lines and machines, the timetable became king.

Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace-loving elite - politicians, business people, intellectuals and artists who genuinely see war as both evil and avoidable.

As long as millions of Germans believe in... a German nation, get excited at... national symbols, retell... national myths, and... sacrifice money, time and limbs for the... nation, Germany will remain one of the strongest powers...

The first commercial train service began operating between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830.

Scientists believe that we will soon have bionic arms that will... be able to transmit signals back to the brain... enabling... the sense of touch.

There is nothing new about biological engineering per se. People have been using it for millennia...

[R]eligion has been the third great unifier... alongside money and empire.

[P]ostmodernist thinkers describe nationalism as a deadly plague that spread... in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, causing wars, oppression, hate and genocide.

Religion can... be defined..[:] a system of human laws... founded on a belief in superhuman laws.

In our time, 'imperialist' ranks second only to 'fascist' in the of political swear words.

According to Nazis, Homo sapiens had already divided into several races, the Aryan race, had the finest qualities ― rationalism, beauty, integrity, diligence... [and] the potential to turn... into superman. Other races... possessing inferior qualities... [i]f allowed to breed... with Aryans... would adulterate... and doom Homo sapiens to extinction.

Gautama... attained nirvana... fully liberated from suffering. Henceforth... as 'Buddha'.., 'The Enlightened One'.., spent... his life explaining his discoveries... in a single law: ...to be ...liberated from suffering is to be ...liberated from craving; and the only way ...is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.

Most past cultures have... fallen prey to the armies of some ruthless empire, which... consigned them to oblivion. Empires... ultimately fall, but... tend to leave behind rich.., enduring legacies.

[M]ost imperial elites... believed that they were working for the general welfare of... inhabitants. China's ruling class treated... neighbours and... foreign subjects as... barbarians to whom the empire must bring... culture. The was bestowed upon the emperor not... to exploit... but... to educate humanity.

Gnostics and Manichaeans argued... the good god created the spirit and soul.., matter and bodies are... of the evil god. Man... serves as a battleground...

Only in the fifteenth century - almost 600 years after the invention of the gunpowder - did s become a decisive factor...

Christians began... widespread missionary activities... In one of history's strangest twists, this esoteric Jewish sect took over the... Roman Empire.

[T]he prophet Muhammad began... by condemning... fellow Arabs for living in ignorance of the divine truth. Yet Muhammad... argue[d] that he knew the full truth, and... followers began calling him 'the '.

The only god that the Romans long refused to tolerate was the monotheistic... evangelising god of the Christians.

Mere observations... are not knowledge. ...[T]o understand the universe, we need ...theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated... theories... [as] stories. Modern science uses mathematics.

Until the Scentific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress... the golden age was... past,... the world... stagnant, if not deteriorating.

In Hindu polytheism, a single principle, Atman, controls the myriad gods and spirits, humankind, and the biological and physical world. Atman is the central essence or soul of the... universe.., of every individual and every phenomenon.

Many Americans... maintain... a to bring the Third World countries... benefits of democracy and human rights, even if... by s and F-16s.

Throughout most of history, mathematics was an esoteric field that even educated people rarely studied seriously. In medieval Europe, logic, grammar and rhetoric formed the educational core... [M]athematics seldom went beyond simple arithmetic and geometry. ...The undisputed monarch of all science was theology.

Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

[U]niversal and missionary religions began to appear... in the first millennium BC.., one of the most important revolutions in history, and made a vital contribution to the unification of humankind, much like... universal empires and... money.

For thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution... consisted mainly of... sacrificing lambs, wine and cakes to divine powers... [for] promised abundant harvest and fecund flocks.

Like Buddhism, Communists believed in a superhuman order of natural and immutable laws that should guide human actions.

Scientists... have found no soul... They... argue... human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than free will ― the... forces that determine... [animal] behaviour...

Money is more open-minded than language, state law, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money... can bridge almost any cultural gap, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation.

[W]illingness to admit ignorance... made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than... previous tradition[s].

Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that 'humanity' is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct.

Judaism had little to offer other nations, and throughout most of its existence... [was] not... a missionary religion.., [but] a 'local monotheism".

The... money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet... coins and bank notes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90% percent of all money... [>]$50 trillion... in our accounts... exists only on computer servers.

When Constantine assumed the throne in 306, Christianity was little more than an esoteric Eastern sect.

The first empire... was the of Sargon the Great...

[T]he majority of ancient religions were local and exclusive.., believed in local deties and spirits, and had no interest in converting the... human race.

Today... there is an irresistible urge to study the exact sciences - defined... 'exact' by their... mathematical tools.

Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad would have been bewildered if... told... that... to understand the... mind and cure its illness you must... study statistics.

The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are... notorious. ...[T]hey disagreed about the nature of... [Christ's] love.

Christian success served as a model for... seventh century... Islam.

[W]hy study history? ...[It] is not a means of making accurate predictions. We study history... to widen... horizons, to understand that our present... is... [not] inevitable, and that we... have many more possibilities before us...

The first monotheist religion known... appeared in Egypt, c.1350 BC, when Pharaoh Akhenaten declared... one of the minor deties... ... supreme power ruling the universe.

The followers of Christ and... Allah killed each other by the thousands, devastated fields and orchards, and turned prosperous cities into smouldering ruins...

Nazis said that the Aryan race, the most advanced form of humanity, had to be protected and fostered, while degenerate kinds of Homo sapiens like Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the mentally ill had to be quarantined and even exterminated.

The greatness of Newton's theory was its ability to explain and predict the movement of all bodies... from falling apples to shooting stars, using three simple mathematical laws.

The most important military invention in the history of China was ... invented accidentally, by Daoist alchemists searching for the .

[E]mpire has been the world’s most common form of political organisation for... 2,500 years.

Biologists have... debunked Nazi racial theory. ...[G]enetic research... has demonstrated that... differences between... human lineages are far smaller...

the Nazis believed that humankind is not something universal or eternal, but rather a mutable species that can evolve or degenerate. Man can evolve into superman, or can degenerate into subhuman.

Dualistic religions espouse... opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes... evil is an independent power, neither created by... nor subordinate to...[God].., that the... universe is a battleground.., that everything... is part of the struggle.

Imperial elites used... profits of conquest to finance... armies and forts but also philosophy, art, justice and charity.

These [polytheistic] religions understood the world to be controlled by... powerful gods... Humans could appeal to these... to bring rain, victory... health.

The modern age has witnessed the rise of... new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.

Present-day speak Arabic, think of themselves as Arabs, and identify... with the Arab Empire that conquered Egypt in the seventh century and crushed... repeated revolts...

Muslim caliphs received a divine mandate to spread the Prophet's revelation, peacefully if possible... by the sword if necessary.

[M]onotheistic brainwashing... caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry.

Only around the end of the nineteenth century did scientists come across a few observations that did not fit... with Newton's laws, and these led to the next revolution... the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

The Scientific Revolution... has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery... was... that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.

For most of history, humans knew nothing about 99.99 per cent of the organisms on the planet... the s. ...Each of us bears billions... They are our best friends, and deadliest enemies. Some... digest our food and clean our guts.., others cause illness and epidemics.

Money is not coins and bank notes. Money is anything that people... use... to represent... value... for... exchanging goods and services.

Revolutions are, by definition unpredictable.

Dualistic religions flourished for more than a thousand years. ...[B]etween 1500 BC and 1000 BC ...Zoroaster ...was active ...in Central Asia. His creed... became the most important of dualistic religions ...Zoroastrians saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good... Ahura Mazda and the evil... Angra Mainyu.

[T]he modern Indian state is a child of the British Empire. The British killed, injured and persecuted... but... also united... warring kingdoms, principalities and tribes, creating a... national consciousness and a country that functioned... as a single political unit.

Money... is most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

To say that a husband 'raped' his wife was... illogical... As of 2006, there were still fifty-three countries where a husband could not be prosecuted for the rape of his wife... in Germany, rape laws were amended only in 1997...

[T]he first text of history contains no philosophical insight, no poetry, legends, laws, or... royal triumphs. They were humdrum economic documents, recording... taxes.., debts and... ownership of property.

Ancient scribes learned not merely to read and write, but also to use catalogues, dictionaries, calendars, forms and tables. They studied the internalised technique of cataloguing, retrieving and processing information very different from those used by the brain.

No other animal [Homo sapiens] had ever moved into such a huge variety of habitats so quickly.

According to a famous Hindu creation myth, the gods fashioned the world out of the body of a primeval being, the Purusa. The sun was created from Purusa's eyes, the moon from Purusa's brain, the Brahmins (priests) from the mouth, the Kshatriyas (warriors) from its arms, the s (peasants and merchants) from its thighs, and Shudras (servants) from its legs.

The Galápagos Islands... remained uninhabited by humans until the nine-teenth century.., preserving a unique menagerie...

One of history's few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally, they reach a point where they can't live without it.

The earliest Sumerian writing was a partial... script. Full script is a system of material signs that can represent spoken language... everything people... say, including poetry. Partial script... can represent only particular... information... [in] a limited field of activity.

Even today, with all our advanced technology, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants... our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC - wheat, rice, maize (called 'corn' in US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant and animal has been domesticated in the last 2000 years.

The Roman Empire... collected taxes from up to 100 million subjects. This... financed... 250,000 - 500,000 soldiers, a road network still in use.., and theatres and amphitheatres that host spectacles to this day.

Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and... enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially.

Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globe's surface, almost ten times the size of Britain.

In the conventional picture, pioneers first built a village, and when it prospered, they set up a temple... But suggests... the temple may have been built first...

From the dawn of agriculture.., billions... armed with branches, swatters, shoes and poison sprays have waged... wars against diligent ants, furtive roaches, adventurous spiders and misguided beetles that constantly infiltrate the human domicile.

[W]hen... complex societies began to appear.., a... new type of information became vital ― numbers.

The domesticated chicken is the most widespread fowl ever.

Writing is born as the maidservant of human consciousness, but is increasingly becoming its master. Our computers have trouble understanding how Homo sapiens talks, feels and dreams. So we are teaching Homo sapiens to talk, feel and dream in the language of numbers, which can be understood by computers.

Neither did the early farmers understand that feeding children with more porridge and less would weaken their immune system, and permanent settlements would be hotbeds of infectious disease.

Throughout history, males have been willing to risk and even sacrifice their lives, just so that people will say, 'He is a real man!'

[F]ood surpluses... with... transportation technology... enabled... more people to cram together... into large villages, then... towns, and finally... cities, all... joined... by new kingdoms and commercial networks.

Anyone who has read... Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of life.

[H]umans sowed seeds, watered plants, plucked weeds from the ground and led sheep to prime pastures. This.., they thought, would provide... more fruit, grain and meat. It was... the Agricultural Revolution.

People everywhere have divided themselves into men and women. And almost everywhere men have got the better deal, at least since the Agricultural Revolution.

[T]he meaning of 'manhood' and 'womanhood' have varied... from one society to another... scholars usually distinguish... 'sex'... [as] biological... and 'gender'... cultural... Sex is divided between males and females, and the qualities... are objective and... constant... Gender is divided between... (...some cultures recognise other categories). ...'masculine' and 'feminine' qualities [which] are inter-subjective and undergo ...changes.

A critical step was made sometime before the ninth century AD, when a new partial script was invented, one that could store and process mathematical data with unprecedented efficiency. This partial script was composed of ten signs, representing the numbers from 0 - 9. Confusingly, these signs were known as even though they were first invented by the Hindus.

According to the science of biology, people were not 'created'. They... evolved. And... not... to be 'equal'. ...Advocates of equality and human rights may be outraged by this... Their response is likely.., ‘...if we believe that we are all equal in essence, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.’ I have no argument with that. ...[B]elieving in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about one hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools.

Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans!

Yugoslavia in 1991 had more than enough... to feed all... and... disintegrated into a... bloodbath.

[E]ven though the slaves were freed, the racist myths that justified slavery persisted. Separation of race was maintained by racist legislation and social customs.

Don't believe... that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record... for driving the most plant and animal species to... extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.

Wars are not a pub brawl. ...[A]n aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease... and... see things from different perspectives. ...The militarily incompetent Augustus ...succeeded in ...achieving something that eluded ...Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great ...[H]istorians often attribute this ...to his ...clementia—mildness and clemency.

The Agricultural Revolution... enlarged the... total... food.., but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. ...[I]t translated into population explosion and pampered elites.

The settlers of Australia, or more accurately, its conquerors, didn't just adapt. They transformed the Australian ecosystem beyond recognition.

It's common... to explain... everything as the result of climate change, but... earth's climate... is in constant flux. Every event in history occurred against the background of... climate change. ...[O]ur planet has experienced numerous cycles of cooling and warming.

Osama bin Laden, for all his hatred of American culture.., religion, and... politics, was... fond of American dollars. How did money succeed where gods and kings failed?

Unlike the laws of physics... every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this... fuels change.

At least since the Agricultural Revolution, most human societies have been patriarchal societies that valued men more highly than women. ... Fewer resources are invested in the health and education of women; they have fewer economic opportunities, less political power, and less freedom of movement.

The structures at are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by s.

[T]he burgeoning new society of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white Europeans and a subjected class of black Africans.

Myths and fictions accustom... people... to think in certain ways, to believe in... certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. ...[T]hereby ...artificial instincts ...enable millions of strangers to cooperate ...This network of artificial instinct is ...'Culture'.

The extinction of the Australian Megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet.

In many societies women were simply the property... Rape, in many legal systems, falls under property violation... [i.e.,] the victim is not the woman... but the male who owns her. The Bible decrees... 'If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes... and lies with her, and they are found... the man... shall give... the father... fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife'... Deuteronomy 22:28-9... Raping a woman who did not belong to any man was not considered a crime...

The agricultural revolution is one of the most controversial events in history. Some... proclaim... it set humankind on the road to prosperity and progress. Others... that it has led to perdition.

The elephant bird and the giant lemurs, along with most of the other large animals of Madagascar, suddenly vanished about 1.500 years ago - precisely when the first humans set foot on the island.

The ancient Chinese believed that the goddess Nü wa created humans from earth, she kneaded aristocrats from fine yellow soil, whereas commoners were formed from brown mud.

American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti and Brazil were plunged by malaria and , which had originated in Africa. Africans had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases.

The moment the hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that the Homo sapiens to the top rung in the food chain, and became the deadliest species ever in the 4-billion-year history of life on earth.

According to... evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth.

[T]he new agricultural tasks demanded so much time... people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat field. ...[W]heat... domesticated us.

This () was a collection of laws and judicial decisions whose aim was to present Hammurabi as a role model of a just king, serve as a basis for a more uniform legal system across the Babylonian Empire, and teach future generations what justice is and how a just king acts.

In modern society, currency notes usually display religious images, revered ancestors and corporate totems.

Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother.

Animism is not a specific religion. It is a generic name for thousands of very different religions, cults and beliefs. What makes all of them 'animist' is this common approach to the world and man's place in it.

When humans domesticated fire, they gained control of an obedient and potentially limitless force.

The Stone Age should be more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by the ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.

The journey of the first humans to Australia is one of the most important events in history, at least as important as Columbus' journey to America or Apollo 11 expedition to the moon.

It (Gossip) comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for the very purpose.

It may well be that when Sapines encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history.

Some human species may have made occasional use of fire as early as 800,000 years ago. By about 300,000 years ago, Homo erctus, Neanderthals and the forefathers of Homo sapiens were using fire on a daily basis.

The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution.

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.

Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge as well.

Theism (from 'theos', 'god' in Greek) is the view that the universal order is based on a hierarchical relationship between humans and a small group of of eternal entities called gods.

Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domestic animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution.

Homo erectus, 'Upright Man,' [survived] for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.

Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45,000 years ago.

Planet Earth was separated into several ecosystems, each made up of a unique assembly of animals and plants. Homo sapiens was about to put an end to this biological exuberance.