How changing our environments may have changed us. I started this project by asking how humans may have changed over the past 10,000 years, but satisfying answers proved elusive. Partly because, to know how we changed, we would have to know who we were before to compare with who we…
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The 10,000 Year Problem Podcast Episode – Ways of Knowing
In this first installment of my ‘I’m Just Sayin” series I discuss the risks of putting all of our learning eggs in the single basket of science. In other words, I think it is dangerous to think we can only know things if we follow science. How did we know…
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The 10,000 Year Problem – Dr. Andrew Schmookler Podcast Interview
On Hierarchy, cooperation, and power “I have this idea . . . it blows me away. It changes the course of my life. And I think that if people saw it that way, it would change the way we operate on this planet.” – Dr. Andrew Schmookler The 10,000 Year…
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How Assholes Stay in Charge
The locking-in mechanisms The Honeymoon is Over Despite a paucity of evidence, I believe cooperation, reciprocal altruism, or some capacity for mutually beneficial social interactions got us through the bulk of human evolution. Many think these behaviors led to massive neurological advances, language, and the arts. Other interactions, including competition…
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The First Artificial Selection
Power becomes Hereditary Cooperation may be the cornerstone of human evolution. It is a key feature differentiating us from other life forms. Sure, some social insects, fish, birds, and even plants exhibit degrees of cooperation, but we made it the foundation of who we are. Cooperating makes us human; it…
Who We Used to Be
When enough was truly enough. Photo by Meressa Chartrand on Unsplash Early Human Life We know almost nothing about 98% of human existence, but what we do know suggests we were doing something right. For most of our time on Earth, humans lived within planetary boundaries. Our populations were small, our appetites and…
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Ancestral Ways of Knowing
How did we used to know things? Why We Need to Know Despite scarce evidence, many people speculate about what human life was like before recorded history. Archaeologists study bones and fragments of human worlds that came before. Anthropologists investigate groups, like villages or early civilizations. Geneticists examine DNA to…
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We Have It All Wrong
Humans will never outsmart nature The Shift Ten thousand years ago, humans experienced a significant shift. Something – some things – happened that drastically altered our evolutionary path. Many believe that a shift toward lootable wealth, generated by increased proficiency in agriculture, storage of surplus, and larger community size, marked…
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Nature is Our Ally
Why cooperation > competition in diverse ecosystems Photo by Hiroko Yoshii on Unsplash How did patriarchy evolve in the social structure of a primarily cooperative species? I began asking myself questions like this after a couple of archaeological experiences in England and Egypt. I realized we must understand — as well as possible…
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A Meaningful Series of Events
Our Pathway to Modernity Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash Who We Were We can only speculate about human societies 10,000 years ago, inferring from limited evidence that we transitioned from nomadic to sedentary life. As food storage became reliable, settlements grew. Brain development and cultural sophistication followed. The narrative varies — some…