Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

by David Christian

Because we humans can share individual maps of our surroundings, we have built up a rich collective understanding of space and time that lies behind all our origin stories. This achievement, apparently unique to our species, means that today, one tiny part of the universe is beginning to understand itself.

This process, which Tomasello calls “cumulative cultural evolution,” is unique to our species.14

“The principal factor promoting historically significant social change is contact with strangers possessing new and unfamiliar skills.”21

Farming was a mega-innovation, a bit like photosynthesis or multicellularity. It set human history off on new and more dynamic pathways by helping our ancestors tap into larger flows of resources and energy that allowed them to do more things and create new forms of wealth.

farming was an energy and resource grab by a single, very resourceful species with access to increasing amounts of information about how to exploit its environment.

Cultural change happens much faster than genetic change, and this explains why farming transformed human lifeways within just a few generations.

Without really intending to, we have introduced changes so rapid and so massive that our species has become the equivalent of a new geological force.

The energy bonanza from fossil fuels was so vast that, in addition to expenditure on reproduction, elite wealth, waste, and the infrastructure for complexity, there was enough left over to raise the consumption levels and living standards of an increasing proportion of humanity. This was a revolutionary transformation.