We have discovered how to swap out our software and replace it as the need arises by oscillating between culture and consciousness. The human niche is niche switching.

“It’s hard to imagine what our minds would do with a new abundance of energy, but we do have two precedents in the billions of years across the span of life on earth: mitochondria, the ‘powerhouse’ of the cell, and fire. Billions of years ago, single cells had to do all the work—find food, run away, convert the food to energy, and all that. It was

Natural selection has made us a cultural species by altering our development in ways that (1) slowed the growth of our bodies through a shortened infancy and extended childhood but added a growth spurt in adolescence, and (2) altered neurological development in complex ways that make our brain advanced at birth yet both highly expandable and enduri

The reason Franklin’s men could not survive is that humans don’t adapt to novel environments the way other animals do or by using our individual intelligence. None of the 105 big brains figured out how to use driftwood, which was available on King William Island’s west coast where they camped, to make the recurve composite bows, which the Inuit use