This Is Your Brain On Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society

by Kathleen McAuliffe

To her, manners are what separated us from animals and allowed us to take “the first baby steps” en route to becoming civilized super-cooperators. Indeed, she thinks manners may have paved the way for “the great leap forward,” an explosion of creativity fifty thousand years ago manifested by specialized hunting tools, jewelry, cave paintings, and other innovations—the first signs that humans were sharing knowledge and skills and working together productively. Manners set our species on the track toward progress, but to truly become civilized, humans needed a more elaborate code of conduct, one that would bind communities together. They needed religion. Fortunately for humanity, it emerged just when it was most needed—namely, when our ancestors stopped wandering the world and decided to put down literal roots. About ten thousand years ago, some hunter-gatherers began experimenting with a radical new lifestyle: farming. Only a few of them did so at first, but the movement picked up steam, and gradually more people began to settle down, trading the wandering life for a patch of land, typically by a river delta.