93
" What is fascinating is that it’s at this juncture, after the end of the last ice age, that wars first break out. Just as we started settling down in one place, archaeological research has determined, we built the first military fortifications. This is also when the first cave paintings appeared that depict archers going at each other, and legions of skeletons from around this time have been found to bear clear traces of violent injury.25 How did it come to this? Scholars think there were at least two causes. One, we now had belongings to fight over, starting with land. And two, settled life made us more distrustful of strangers. Foraging nomads had a fairly laid-back membership policy: you crossed paths with new people all the time and could easily join up with another group.26 Villagers, on the other hand, grew more focused on their own communities and their own possessions. Homo puppy went from cosmopolitan to xenophobe. "
― Rutger Bregman , Humankind: A Hopeful History
94
" There was no lightbulb moment when somebody shouted: ‘Eureka! Let’s start planting crops!’ Though our ancestors had been aware for tens of thousands of years that you could plant things and harvest them, they also knew enough not to go down that road. ‘Why should we plant,’ exclaimed one !Kung tribesman to an anthropologist, ‘when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?’39 The most logical explanation is that we fell into a trap. That trap was the fertile floodplain between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where crops grew without much effort. There we could sow in soil enriched by a soft layer of nutrient-rich sediment left behind each year by the receding waters. With nature doing most of the work, even the work-shy Homo puppy was willing to give farming a go.40 What our ancestors couldn’t have foreseen was how humankind would proliferate. As their settlements grew denser, the population of wild animals declined. To compensate, the amount of land under cultivation had to be extended to areas not blessed with fertile soil. Now farming was not nearly so effortless. We had to plough and sow from dawn to dusk. Not being built for this kind of work, our bodies developed all kinds of aches and pains. We had evolved to gather berries and chill out, and now our lives were filled with hard, heavy labour. So why didn’t we just go back to our freewheeling way of life? Because it was too late. Not only were there too many mouths to feed, but by this time we’d also lost the knack of foraging. And we couldn’t just pack up and head for greener pastures, because we were hemmed in by neighbouring settlements, "
― Rutger Bregman , Humankind: A Hopeful History
96
" Lo primero que hay que saber de la especie humana es que, en términos evolutivos, acabamos de llegar al mundo. Para que te hagas una idea, supongamos que la historia de la vida en la Tierra abarcara solamente un año de calendario, en vez de cuatro mil millones de años. En ese caso, las bacterias habrían tenido el planeta entero para ellas solas hasta mediados de octubre, y hasta noviembre no habría aparecido la vida tal y como la conocemos, con patas y huesos, ramas y hojas. ¿Y el ser humano? Nosotros no entramos en escena hasta el 31 de diciembre, en torno a las once de la noche. Durante la práctica totalidad de nuestra primera hora de existencia nos dedicamos a la caza y la recolección en pequeños grupos de nómadas. En el último momento, a las 23:58, inventamos la agricultura, y durante los sesenta segundos previos a las campanadas de fin de año tuvo lugar todo lo que llamamos «historia», con pirámides y castillos, caballeros medievales y princesas, máquinas de vapor y aviones. En un abrir y cerrar de ojos, el Homo sapiens se adueñó del mundo, desde las tundras más inhóspitas hasta los desiertos más áridos, y se convirtió en la primera especie en abandonar el planeta y poner los pies en la Luna. "
― Rutger Bregman , Humankind: A Hopeful History
