Sublime

FOR 2.5 MILLION YEARS HUMANS FED themselves by gathering plants and hunting animals that lived and bred without their intervention. Homo erectus, Homo ergaster and the Neanderthals plucked wild figs and hunted wild sheep without deciding where fig trees would take root, in which meadow a herd of sheep should graze, or which billy goat would insemin

When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

Economists describe the Tragedy of the Commons like this: cattle herders sharing a pasture will inevitably place the needs of their cows above the needs of others’, adding cow after cow and taking more than their share of the common grass. The “free rider” takes advantage of the commons, and consumes it until it’s gone. This, the argument goes, is

Hunting-and-gathering societies were the only forms of social organization through a long, prehistoric slumber when human life changed little or not at all from generation to generation. Anthropologists claim that humans have been hunters and gatherers for 99 percent of the time since we appeared on earth.

The most damaging legacy of their past, she says, is genetic. Seventy-five per cent of the tribe have diabetes and 25 per cent have had amputations because of the disease: legs, arms, fingers, toes. As wandering hunter-gatherers, with a diet that was mostly lean meat, grilled, boiled or eaten raw, the Comanches evolved without any exposure to refin

Here’s something else to consider: the RDA recommendations are actually optimal values, not minimal needs. Since some people require more protein than others, the USDA chose as their recommendation a value that assures adequate protein for 99 percent of the country. Based on the assumption that too much is safer than not enough (not true, as you’ll

The Paleolithic humans lived in small foraging bands of perhaps twenty-five to thirty members, with seasonally shifting base camps organized around the campfire.

Bees construct hives out of wax and wood fibers, which they then fight, kill, and die to defend. Humans construct moral communities out of shared norms, institutions, and gods that, even in the twenty-first century, they fight, kill, and die to defend.

Ever since Adam Smith, those trying to prove that contemporary forms of competitive market exchange are rooted in human nature have pointed to the existence of what they call ‘primitive trade’. Already tens of thousands of years ago, one can find evidence of objects – very often precious stones, shells or other items of adornment – being moved arou