Extinction

by Douglas Preston

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous. —Edward O. Wilson

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception. —Carl Sagan

“In his book on prehistoric cannibalism in the Southwest, Christy Turner divided cannibalism into different types.” “Different types? Like what?” “First, there’s survival cannibalism. That’s when people who are starving eat other people as a last resort—like the Donner Party in California, where they had to eat their dead companions and relatives to keep from starving to death.” “Ew.”

ritual cannibalism. This is where a person will be consumed after death as part of a funerary rite. The Fore of New Guinea ate the brains of deceased loved ones to incorporate their essence back into the living.” “Double

“They got a disease from it, called kuru, a prion disease, which almost wiped them out. And then there’s sacrificial cannibalism, in which people are offered up to the gods as a sacrifice and their bodies eaten. That was...

the American Southwest. That’s cannibalism as a tool of terror. If some really evil dudes want to show everyone how badass they are, what better way than to kill your enemies and then cook and eat them and leave the bones for all to see?

The agricultural revolution turned you from free wanderers into slaves to the land. The Industrial Revolution robbed you of your souls and made you cruel. And the IT revolution gave you loneliness, hatred, and misery. What’s next for Sapiens in the glorious march of progress?”