Sapiens References - Yuval Noah Harari

For each chapter in Sapiens we have included below: a list of existing references, already published in the book; and a list of additional references, that may interest readers who would like to explore further.

Part I – The Cognitive Revolution

Chapter 1 – An Animal of No Significance

Existing References 1

Ann Gibbons, ‘Food for Thought: Did the First Cooked Meals Help Fuel the Dramatic Evolutionary Expansion of the Human Brain?’, Science 316:5831 (2007), 1558-1560.

Additional References

About 13.5 billion years ago…
John Gribbin, 13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything (London: Icon Books, 2015).

About 300,000 years after their appearance…
Brian L. Silver, The Ascent of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 468-70.

About 3.8 billion years ago…
Enrico Coen, Cells to Civilizations: Principles of Change that Shape Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 59.

All cats, for example, from the smallest house kitten to the most ferocious lion…
D.W. Macdonald and A.J. Loveridge, ed., Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 61-66.

Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters…
Nick Patterson et al., “Genetic Evidence for Complex Speciation of Humans and Chimpanzees,” Nature 441 (2006), 1103-8; Mark Stoneking, An Introduction to Molecular Anthropology (New Jersey: Wiley, 2017), 205.

Humans first evolved in East Africa…
For this transformative period, see: Kaye E. Reed, John G. Fleagle and Richard E. Leakey, The Paleobiology of Australopithecus (New York: Springer, 2013).

Neanderthals, bulkier and more muscular than us Sapiens…
Clive Finlayson, Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 86; Stephen Wroe et al., “Computer Simulations Show that Neanderthal Facial Morphology Represents Adaptation to Cold and High Energy Demands, but Not Heavy Biting,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285:1876 (2018); A. Theodore Steegmann Jr., Frank J. Cerny and Trenton W. Holliday, “Neandertal Cold Adaptation: Physiological and Energetic Factors,” American Journal of Human Biology 14:5 (2002), 566-83.

This unique species, known by scientists as Homo floresiensis…
Robin W. Dennell et al., “The Origins and Persistence of Homo floresiensis on Flores: Biogeographical and Ecological Perspectives,” Quaternary Science Reviews 96 (2014), 98-107; Peter Bellwood, First Islanders: Prehistory and Human Migration in Island Southeast Asia (Oxford: Wiley, Blackwell, 2017), 60-73.

In 2010 another lost sibling was rescued from oblivion…
Robert G. Franciscus and Trenton W. Holliday, “Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in Western Asia,” in The Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered, ed. Fred H. Smith and James C.M. Ahern (New Jersey: Wiley, 2013), 48-9.

Despite their many differences, all human species share several defining characteristics…
Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge, The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 5, 194; H. James Birx, ed., Encyclopedia of Anthropology, vol.1 (Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage, 2006), 1189.

The fact is that a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body…
Mireille Bélanger, Igor Allaman and Pierre J. Magistretti, “Brain Energy Metabolism: Focus on Astrocyte-Neuron Metabolic Cooperation,” Cell Metabolism 14 (2011), 724; Doug M. Boyer and Arianna R. Harrington, “Scaling of Bony Canals for Encephalic Vessels in Euarchontans: Implications for the Role of the Vertebral Artery and Brain Metabolism,” Journal of Human Evolution 114 (2018), 85-101; Leslie C. Aiello, Nicola Bates and Tracey Joffe, “In Defense of the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis,” in Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex, ed. Dean Falk and Kathleen R. Gibson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 57-78.

The first evidence for tool production dates from about 2.5 million years ago…
Jeffrrey K. McKee, Frank E. Poirier and W. Scott McGraw, Understanding Human Evolution, 5th ed. (London, New York: Routledge, 2016), 23.

Women paid extra
For a general discussion on the evolution of the human female body see: Wenda Trevathan, Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

One of the most common uses of early stone tools
Karen D. Lupo, “Cut and Tooth Mark Distributions on Large Animal Bones: Ethnoarchaeological Data from the Hadza and Their Implications for Current Ideas about Early Human Carnivory,” Journal of Archaeological Science 29 (2002), 85-109.

This is a key to understanding our history and psychology
For a comprehensive discussion see: Donna Hart, Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution (New York: Westview Press, 2008).

A significant step on the way to the top was the domestication of fire
Naama Goren-Inbar et al., “Evidence of Hominin Control of Fire at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel,” Science 304:5671 (2004), 725-27; Wil Roebroeks and Paola Villa, “On the Earliest Evidence for Habitual Use of Fire in Europe,” PNAS 108:13 (2011), 5209-14;

But the best thing fire did was cook… The advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food…
Ann Gibbons, ‘Food for Thought: Did the First Cooked Meals Help Fuel the Dramatic Evolutionary Expansion of the Human Brain?’, Science 316:5831 (2007), 1558-1560; for a general discussion see: Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire (New York, Scholastic Press, 2009).

Our own species, Homo sapiens, was already present on the world stage…
Huw S. Groucutt et al., “Rethinking the Dispersal of Homo Sapiens Out of Africa,” Evolutionary Anthropology 24 (2015), 149-64. For a recent finding originating a pan-African origin of Homo sapiens see for example: Jean-Jacques Hublin et al., “New Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African Origin of Homo sapiens,” Nature 546 (2017), 289-92.

When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of Eurasia was already settled by other humans…
Michael F. Hammer, “Human Hybrids,” Scientific American: Evolution 308 (2013), 66-71; Kwang Hyun Ko, “Hominin Interbreeding and the Evolution of Human Variation,” Journal of Biological Research 23:17 (2016); Julia Galway-Witham and Chris Stringer, “How Did Homo Sapiens Evolve?” Science 360:6395 (2018), 1296-98.

For example, when Sapiens reached the Middle East and Europe, they encountered the Neanderthals…
Penny Spikins et al., “Calculated or Caring? Neanderthal Healthcare in Social Context,” World Archaeology, February 22, 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438243.2018.1433060, accessed July 5, 2018.

The opposing view, called the “Replacement Theory” tells a very different story – one of incompatibility, revulsion, and perhaps even genocide
Chuan-Chao Wang, Sara E. Farina and Hui Li, “Neanderthal DNA and Modern Human Origins,” Quaternary International 295 (2013), 126-9; María Martinón-Torres et al., Homo sapiens in the Eastern Asian Late-Pleistocene,” Current Anthropology 58:s17 (2017), s434-s448.

In recent decades the Replacement Theory has been the common wisdom in the field.
Richard E. Green et al., “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome,” Science 328:5979 (2010), 710-22.

It turned out that one to four percent of the unique human DNA of modern populations in the Middle East and Europe is Neanderthal DNA.
David Reich et al., “Genetic History of an Archaic Hominin Group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,” Nature 468 (2010), 1053-60; Morten Rasmussen et al., “An Aboriginal Australia Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia,” Science 334 (2011), 94-98; Benjamin Vernot at al., “Excavating Neandertal and Denisovan DNA from the Genomes of Melanesian Individuals,” Science, March 17, 2016, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/03/16/science.Aad9416, accessed July 5, 2018.

But if the Neanderthals, Denisovans and other human species didn’t merge with Sapiens, why did they vanish?
For a general discussion see: Clive Finlayson, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Chapter 2 – The Tree of Knowledge

Existing References

Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000); Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005); Michael L. Wilson and Richard W. Wrangham, ‘Intergroup Relations in Chimpanzees’, Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003), 363-392; M. McFarland Symington, ‘Fission-Fusion Social Organization in Ateles and Pan’, International Journal of Primatology, 11:1 (1990), 49; Colin A. Chapman and Lauren J. Chapman, ‘Determinants of Groups Size in Primates: The Importance of Travel Costs’, in On the Move: How and Why Animals Travel in Groups, ed. Sue Boinsky and Paul A. Garber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 26.

Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, 69-79; Leslie C. Aiello and R. I. M. Dunbar, ‘Neocortex Size, Group Size, and the Evolution of Language’, Current Anthropology 34:2 (1993), 189. For criticism of this approach see: Christopher McCarthy et al., ‘Comparing Two Methods for Estimating Network Size’, Human Organization 60:1 (2001), 32; R. A. Hill and R. I. M. Dunbar, ‘Social Network Size in Humans’, Human Nature 14:1 (2003), 65.

Yvette Taborin, ‘Shells of the French Aurignacian and Perigordian’, in Before Lascaux: The Complete Record of the Early Upper Paleolithic, ed. Heidi Knecht, Anne Pike-Tay and Randall White (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1993), 211-28.

G.R. Summerhayes, ‘Application of PIXE-PIGME to Archaeological Analysis of Changing Patterns of Obsidian Use in West New Britain, Papua New Guinea’, in Archaeological Obsidian Studies: Method and Theory, ed. Steven M. Shackley (New York: Plenum Press, 1998), 129-58.

Additional References

In fact, in the first recorded encounter between Sapiens and Neanderthals, the Neanderthals won

Saioa López, Lucy van Dorp and Garrett Hellenthal, “Human Dispersal Out of Africa: A Lasting Debate,” Evolutionary Bioinformatics 11 (2015): 57-68.

But then, beginning about 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens started doing very special things

For a general discussion see: Stephen Oppenheimer, Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World (London: Constable, 2003).

The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago

Jianzhi Zhang, David M. Webb and Ondrej Podlaha, “Accelerated Protein Evolution and Origins of Human-Specific Features:FOXP2 as an Example,”

Genetics 162:4 (2002), 1825-35; Philip Lieberman, “FOXP2 and Human Cognition,” Cell 137:5 (2009), 800-2; Gary F. Marcus and Simon E. Fisher,

“FOXP2 in Focus: What Can Genes Tell Us about Speech and Language?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:6 (2003), 257-62.

For example, green monkeys use calls of various kinds to communicate

Tabitha Price and Julia Fischer, “Meaning Attribution in the West African Green Monkey: Influence of Call Type and Context,” Animal Cognition 17:2 (2014): 277-86. See also: Tabitha Price et al., “Vervet Revisited: A Quantitative Analysis of Alarm Call Structure and Context Specificity,” Scientific Reports 5 (2015): 13220.

Even insects, such as bees and ants

James C. Nieh, “Recruitment Communication in Stingless Bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini),” Apidologie 35:2 (2004): 159-82; Elva J. H. Robinson et al., “Insect Communication: ‘No Entry’ Signal in Ant Foraging,” Nature 438 (2005): 42.

Sapiens can produce many more distinct sounds than green monkeys, but whales and elephants have equally impressive abilities

Karen McComb, “Long-Distance Communication of Acoustic Cues to Social Identity in African Elephants,” Animal Behavior 65:2 (2003): 317-29; Vincent M. Janik, “Catacean Vocal Learning and Communication,” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 28 (2014): 60-65.

The amount of information that one must obtain and store in order to track the ever-changing relationships of even a few dozen individuals is staggering

Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

The gossip theory might sound like a joke, but numerous studies support it.

Francis T. McAndrew and Megan A. Milenkovic, “Of Tabloids and Family Secrets: The Evolutionary Psychology of Gossip,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 32:5 (2002): 1064-82; Robin Dunbar, “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” Review of General Psychology 8:2 (2004): 100-10; Eric K. Foster, “Research on Gossip: Taxonomy, Methods and Future Directions,” Review of General Psychology 8:2 (2004): 78-99; Nicole H. Hess and Edward H. Hagen, “Psychological Adaptations for Assessing Gossip Veracity,” Human Nature 17:3 (2006): 337-54; Matthew Feinberg, “Gossip and Ostracism Promote Cooperation in Groups,” Psychological Science 25:3 (2014): 656-64.

Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers, but they do so in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives

For an example see: Danielle P. Mersch, Alessandro Crespi and Laurent Keller, “Tracking Individuals Shows Spatial Fidelity Is a Key Regulator of Ant Social Organization,” Science 340:6136 (2013): 1090-93.

Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately

This becomes apparent especially during hunting. For example: Christopher Boesch, “Cooperative Hunting Roles among Tai Chimpanzees,” Human Nature 13:1 (2002): 27-46; Ian C. Gilby, Lynn E. Eberly and Richard W. Wrangham, “Economic Profitability of Social Predation among Wild Chimpanzees: Individual Variation Promotes Cooperation,” Animal Behaviour 75:2 (2008): 351-60; C. Muro et al., “Wolf-Pact (Canis lupus) Hunting Strategies Emerge from Simple Rules in Computational Simulations,” Behavioural Processes 88:3 (2011): 192-7; Candice Baan et al., “Conflict Management in Free-Ranging Wolves, Canis lupus,” Animal Behavior 90 (2014): 327-34.

Our chimpanzee cousins usually live in small troops of several dozen individuals

For comprehensive studies on chimpanzee social dynamics see: Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Christophe Boesch, The Real Chimpanzee: Sex Strategies in the Forest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); William McGrew, The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Michio Nakamura et al., ed., Mahale Chimpanzees: 50 Years of Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of about 20–50 individuals.

Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005); Michael L. Wilson and Richard W. Wrangham, ‘Intergroup Relations in Chimpanzees’, Annual Review of Anthropology 32 (2003), 363-392; M. McFarland Symington, ‘Fission-Fusion Social Organization in Ateles and Pan’, International Journal of Primatology, 11:1 (1990), 49; Colin A. Chapman and Lauren J. Chapman, ‘Determinants of Groups Size in Primates: The Importance of Travel Costs’, in On the Move: How and Why Animals Travel in Groups, ed. Sue Boinsky and Paul A. Garber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 26.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands.

Jan de Ruiter, Gavin Weston and Stephen M. Lyon, “Dunbar’s Number: Group Size and Brain Physiology in Humans Reexamined,” American Anthropologist 113:4 (2011): 557-68.

Today the company employs about 200,000 people worldwide, most of whom are complete strangers to each other.

PSA Peugeot Citroen, 2008 Registration Document, PSA Groupe, https://www.groupe-psa.com/en/finance/regulated-information/, accessed July 19, 2018.

If in thirteenth-century France Jean set up a wagon-manufacturing workshop, he himself was the business.

Stephen M. Bainbridge and M. Todd Henderson, Limited Liability: A Legal and Economic Analysis (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), 23-24.

Despite their having no real bodies, the American legal system treats corporations as legal persons, as if they were flesh-and-blood human beings.

Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2010).

No one was lying when, in 2011, the UN demanded that the Libyan government respect the human rights of its citizens

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1973 (2011), March 17, 2011, https://undocs.org/S/RES/1973(2011), accessed July 26, 2018.

For example, common chimpanzees have a genetic tendency to live in hierarchical groups headed by an alpha male. Members of a closely-related chimpanzee species, bonobos, usually live in more egalitarian groups dominated by female alliances.

Gottfried Hohmann and Barbara Fruth, “Dynamics in Social Organization of Bonobos (Pan paniscus),” in Behavioral Diversity in Chimpanzees and Bonobos, ed. Christophe Boesch, Gottfried Hohmann and Linda F. Merchant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 138.

Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behavior to rapidly changing challenges.

For a general discussion on this hotly debated topic see for example: Eudald Carbonell i Roura, ed., High Resolution Archaeology and Neanderthal Behavior (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012).

Archaeologists excavating 30,000-years-old Sapiens sites in the European heartland occasionally find there seashells

Another example comes from the South Pacific.

Archeologists have discovered sites where entire herds were butchered annually in such ways. There are even sites where fences and obstacles were erected in order to create artificial traps and slaughtering grounds.

Marcel Kornfeld, George C. Frison and Mary Lou Larson, Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies, 3rd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 291-342; Paul J. Lane, “Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers, Ethnoarchaeology and Analogical Reasoning,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers, ed., Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan and Marek Zvelebil, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 124-8. For a specific example see: Matthew G. Hill, “Late Paleoindian (Allen/Frederick Complex) Subsistence Activities at the Clary Ranch Site, Ash Hollow, Garden County Nebraska,” Plains Anthropologist 50:195 (2005): 249-63e

Chapter 3 – A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve

Existing References

Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (New York: Harper, 2010); S. Beckerman and P. Valentine (eds.), Cultures of Multiple Fathers. The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002).

Noel G. Butlin, Economics and the Dreamtime: A Hypothetical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 98-101; Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians (Sydney: Allen & Unwin , 2002), 15; William Howell Edwards, An Introduction to Aboriginal Societies (Wentworth Falls, N.S.W.: Social Science Press, 1988), 52.

Fekri A. Hassan, Demographic Archaeology (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 196-99; Lewis Robert Binford, Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Hunter Gatherer and Environmental Data Sets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 143.

Brian Hare, The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think (Dutton: Penguin Group, 2013).

Christopher B. Ruff, Erik Trinkaus and Trenton W. Holliday, ‘Body Mass and Encephalization in Pleistocene Homo’, Nature 387 (1997), 173-176; M. Henneberg and M. Steyn, ‘Trends in Cranial Capacity and Cranial Index in Subsaharan Africa During the Holocene’, American Journal of Human Biology 5:4 (1993): 473-79; Drew H. Bailey and David C. Geary, ‘Hominid Brain Evolution: Testing Climatic, Ecological, and Social Competition Models’, Human Nature 20 (2009): 67-79; Daniel J. Wescott and Richard L. Jantz, ‘Assessing Craniofacial Secular Change in American Blacks and Whites Using Geometric Morphometry’, in Modern Morphometrics in Physical Anthropology: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects, ed. Dennis E. Slice (New York: Plenum Publishers, 2005), 231-45.

Nicholas G. Blurton Jones et al., ‘Antiquity of Postreproductive Life: Are There Modern Impact on Hunter-Gatherer Postreproductive Life Spans?’, American Journal of Human Biology 14 (2002), 184-205.

Kim Hill and A. Magdalena Hurtado, Aché Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1996), 164, 236.

Hill and Hurtado, Aché Life History, 78.

Vincenzo Formicola and Alexandra P. Buzhilova, ‘Double Child Burial from Sunghir (Russia): Pathology and Inferences for Upper Paleolithic Funerary Practices’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124:3 (2004), 189-98; Giacomo Giacobini, ‘Richness and Diversity of Burial Rituals in the Upper Paleolithic’, Diogenes 54:2 (2007), 19-39.

I. J. N. Thorpe, ‘Anthropology, Archaeology, and the Origin of Warfare’, World Archeology 35:1 (2003), 145-65; Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Lawrence H. Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Slavomil Vencl, ‘Stone Age Warfare’, in Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives, ed. John Carman and Anthony Harding (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 57-73.

Additional References

The flourishing field of evolutionary psychology argues that many of our present-day social and psychological characteristics were shaped during this long pre-agricultural era.

For general discussions and critiques see: Robert C.M. Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); David J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutiorany Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, London: MIT, 2006). For a specific example concerning modern prevalence of depression see: Brandon H. Hidaka, “Depression as a Disease of Modernity: Explanations for Increasing Prevalence,” Journal of Affective Disorders 140:3 (2012): 205-14.

Why, for example, do people gorge on high-calorie food that is doing little good to their bodies?

For a general discussion see: Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin, The Evolution of Obesity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).

The wholesome and varied diet, the relatively short working week. First and most famously articulated in Marshall D. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1972). For a discussion on the complexity of hunter-gatherer life see: Robert L. Kelly, The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 166-213.

The Ache people, hunter-gatherers who lived in the jungles of Paraguay until the 1960s, offer a glimpse into the darker side of foraging. See: Kim Hill and A. Magdalena Hurtado, Aché Life History: The Ecology and Demography of a Foraging People (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1996), 164, 236.

Anthropologists who lived with them for years report that violence between adults was very rare. Hill and Hurtado, Aché Life History, 78.

Most scholars agree that animistic beliefs were common among ancient foragers. For discussion on animism in hunter-gatherer society see: Hervey C. Peoples, Pavel Duda and Frank W. Marlowe, “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion,” Human Nature 27:3 (2016), 261-82; Vicki Cummings, The Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers: Key Themes for Archaeologists (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 76-9.

In Sungir, Russia, archeologists discovered in 1955 a 30,000-year-old burial site belonging to a mammoth-hunting culture. For a comprehensive review see: Erik Trinkaus, Alexandra P. Buzhilova, Maria B. Mednikova and Maria V. Dobrovolskaya, The People of Sunghir: Burials, Bodies and Behavior in Earlier Upper Paleolithic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Vincenzo Formicola and Alexandra P. Buzhilova, “Double Child Burial from Sunghir (Russia): Pathology and Inferences for Upper Paleolithic Funerary Practices,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124:3 (2004), 189-98; Giacomo Giacobini, “Richness and Diversity of Burial Rituals in the Upper Paleolithic,” Diogenes 54:2 (2007), 19-39.

The anthropological evidence is intriguing but very problematic. For a series of studies on hunter-gatherers and violence see: Mark W. Allen and Terry L. Jones, ed., Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2014); Peter P. Schweitzer, Megan Biesele and Robert K. Hitchcock, Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance and Self-Determination (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000).

Duly warned, we can now turn to the archeological findings.

E. Cunha, C. Umbelino and F. Cardoso, “New Anthropological Data on the Mesolithic Communities from Portugal: The Shell, Middens from Sado,” Human Evolution 17:3-4 (2002): 187-97; Mirjana Roksandic et al., “Interpersonal Violence at Lepenski Vir Mesolithic/Neolithic Complex of the Iron Gates Gorge (Serbia-Romania),” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 129 (2006): 339-48.

At Jabl Sahaba in Sudan, a 12,000-year-old cemetery containing 59 skeletons was discovered

F. Wendorf, “Site 117: A Nubian Final Paleolithic Graveyard near Jebel Sahaba, Sudan,” The Prehistory of Nubia 2 (1968): 954-95.

In Ofnet Cave in Bavaria,

J. Orschiedt, “The Head Burials from Ofnet Cave: An Example of Warlike Conflict in the Mesolithic,” in in M. Parker-Pearson and I.J. Thorpe, ed., Warfare, Violence and Slavery in Prehistory (2005), 67-73.

Chapter 4 – The Flood

Existing References

James F. O’Connel and Jim Allen, ‘Pre-LGM Sahul (Pleistocene Australia – New Guinea) and the Archeology of Early Modern Humans’, in Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans, ed. Paul Mellars, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Katie Boyle (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2007), 395-410; James F. O’Connel and Jim Allen, ‘When Did Humans First Arrived in Grater Australia and Why Is It Important to Know?’, Evolutionary Anthropology, 6:4 (1998), 132-46; James F. O’Connel and Jim Allen, ‘Dating the Colonization of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia – New Guinea): A Review of Recent Research’, Journal of Radiological Science 31:6 (2004), 835-53; Jon M. Erlandson, ‘Anatomically Modern Humans, Maritime Voyaging, and the Pleistocene Colonization of the Americas’, in The first Americans: the Pleistocene Colonization of the New World, ed. Nina G. Jablonski (San Francisco: University of California Press, 2002), 59-60, 63-64; Jon M. Erlandson and Torben C. Rick, ‘Archeology Meets Marine Ecology: The Antiquity of Maritime Cultures and Human Impacts on Marine Fisheries and Ecosystems’, Annual Review of Marine Science 2 (2010), 231-51; Atholl Anderson, ‘Slow Boats from China: Issues in the Prehistory of Indo-China Seafaring’, Modern Quaternary Research in Southeast Asia, 16 (2000), 13-50; Robert G. Bednarik, ‘Maritime Navigation in the Lower and Middle Paleolithic’, Earth and Planetary Sciences 328 (1999), 559-60; Robert G. Bednarik, ‘Seafaring in the Pleistocene’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13:1 (2003), 41-66.

Timothy F. Flannery, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and Peoples (Port Melbourne, Vic.: Reed Books Australia, 1994); Anthony D. Barnosky et al., ‘Assessing the Causes of Late Pleistocene Extinctions on the Continents’, Science 306:5693 (2004): 70–75; Bary W. Brook and David M. J. S. Bowman, ‘The Uncertain Blitzkrieg of Pleistocene Megafauna’, Journal of Biogeography 31:4 (2004), 517–23; Gifford H. Miller et al., ‘Ecosystem Collapse in Pleistocene Australia and a Human Role in Megafaunal Extinction,’ Science 309:5732 (2005), 287–90; Richard G. Roberts et al., ‘New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent Wide Extinction about 46,000 Years Ago’, Science 292:5523 (2001), 1888–92.

Stephen Wroe and Judith Field, ‘A Review of Evidence for a Human Role in the Extinction of Australian Megafauna and an Alternative Explanation’, Quaternary Science Reviews 25:21–22 (2006), 2692–2703; Barry W. Brooks et al., ‘Would the Australian Megafauna Have Become Extinct If Humans Had Never Colonised the Continent? Comments on ‘‘A Review of the Evidence for a Human Role in the Extinction of Australian Megafauna and an Alternative Explanation’’ by S. Wroe and J. Field’, Quaternary Science Reviews 26:3-4 (2007), 560-564; Chris S. M. Turney et al., ‘Late-Surviving Megafauna in Tasmania, Australia, Implicate Human Involvement in their Extinction’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:34 (2008), 12150-53.

John Alroy, ‘A Multispecies Overkill Simulation of the End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Mass Extinction’, Science, 292:5523 (2001), 1893-96; O’Connel and Allen, ‘Pre-LGM Sahul’, 400-1.

L.H. Keeley, ‘Proto-Agricultural Practices Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Survey’, in Last Hunters, First Farmers: New Perspectives on the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture, ed. T. Douglas Price and Anne Birgitte Gebauer (Santa Fe, N.M.: School of American Research Press, 1995), 243–72; R. Jones, ‘Firestick Farming’, Australian Natural History 16 (1969), 224-28.

David J. Meltzer, First Peoples in a New World:‎ Colonizing Ice Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). ‎

Paul L. Koch and Anthony D. Barnosky, ‘Late Quaternary Extinctions: State of the Debate’, The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 37 (2006), 215-50; Anthony D. Barnosky et al., ‘Assessing the Causes of Late Pleistocene Extinctions on the Continents’, 70-5.

Additional References

Flores, for example, was colonized as far back as 850,000 years ago

Robin W. Dennell et al., “The Origins and Persistence of Homo floresiensis on Flores: Biogeographical and Ecological Perspectives,” Quaternary Science Reviews 96 (2014): 98-107.

Their first achievement was the colonization of Australia some 45,000 years ago

The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves

Firstly, even though Australia’s climate changed some 45,000 years ago, it wasn’t a very remarkable upheaval

Thirdly, mass extinctions akin to the archetypal Australian decimation occurred again and again in the ensuing millennia—whenever people settled another part of the Outer World. In these cases Sapiens guilt is irrefutable.

George L.W. Perrt et al., “A High-Precision Chronology for the Rapid Extinction of New Zealand Moa (Aves, Dinornithiformes),” Quaternary Science Reviews 105 (2014): 126-35.

A similar fate befell the mammoth population of Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean

A.J. Stuart et al., “Pleistocene to Holocene Extinction Dynamics in Giant Deer and Wooly Mammoth,” Nature 431 (2004): 684-89.

Large animals—the primary victims of the Australian extinction—breed slowly

John Alroy, ‘A Multispecies Overkill Simulation of the End-Pleistocene Megafaunal Mass Extinction’, Science, 292:5523 (2001), 1893-96; O’Connel and Allen, ‘Pre-LGM Sahul’, 400-1.

They slowly honed their hunting skills, and began going after large animals around 400,000 years ago

Julien Louys, Darren Curnoe and Haowen Tong, “Characteristics of Pleistocene Megafauna Extinctions in Southeast Asia,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 243 (2007): 152-73.

The second explanation is that by the time Sapiens reached Australia, they had already mastered fire agriculture.

A third explanation agrees that hunting and fire agriculture played a significant role in the extinction, but emphasizes that we can’t completely ignore the role of climate.

Stephen Wroe et al., “Climate Change Frames Debate over the Extinction of Megafauna in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea,” PNAS 110:22 (2013): 8777-81.

It was followed by an even larger ecological disaster, this time in America.

Stephan Schiffels and Richard Durbin, “Inferring Human Population Size and Separation History from Multiple Genome Sequences,” Nature Genetics 49 (2014): 919-25.

At first, glaciers blocked the way from Alaska to the rest of America, allowing no more than perhaps a few isolated pioneers to investigate the lands further south

David J. Meltzer, First Peoples in a New World:‎ Colonizing Ice Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). ‎

The settling of America was hardly bloodless. It left behind a long trail of victims.

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over 50 kilograms

Anthony D. Barnosky et al., “Assessing the Causes of Late Pleistocene Extinctions of the Continents,” Science 306:5693 (2004): 70-75.

The large island of Madagascar, about 400 kilometers east of the African mainland, offers a famous example.

David A. Burney, Guy S. Robinson and Lida Pigott Burney, “Sporormiella and the Late Holocene Extinctions in Madagascar,” PNAS 100:19 (2003): 10800-5.

In the Pacific Ocean, the main wave of extinction began in about 1500 BC, when Polynesian farmers settled the Solomon Islands, Fiji, and New Caledonia

David W. Steadman and Paul S. Martin, “The Late Quaternary Extinction and Future Resurrection of Birds on Pacific Islands,” Earth-Science Reviews 61:1-2 (2003): 133-47.

Part II – The Agricultural Revolution

Chapter 5 – History’s Biggest Fraud

Existing References

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997).

Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 130-131; Robert S. Walker and Drew H. Bailey, ‘Body Counts in Lowland South American Violence,’ Evolution and Human Behavior 34 (2013), 29-34.

Katherine A. Spielmann, ‘A Review: Dietary Restriction on Hunter-Gatherer Women and the Implications for Fertility and Infant Mortality’, Human Ecology 17:3 (1989), 321-45. See also: Bruce Winterhalder and Eric Alder Smith, ‘Analyzing Adaptive Strategies: Human Behavioral Ecology at Twenty Five’, Evolutionary Anthropology 9:2 (2000), 51-72.

Alain Bideau, Bertrand Desjardins and Hector Perez-Brignoli (eds.), Infant and Child Mortality in the Past (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); Edward Anthony Wrigley et al., English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 295-96, 303

Manfred Heun et al., ‘Site of Einkorn Wheat Domestication Identified by DNA Fingerprints’, Science 278:5341 (1997), 1312-14.

Charles Patterson, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (New York: Lantern Books, 2002), 9-10; Peter J. Ucko and G.W. Dimbleby (ed.), The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (London: Duckworth, 1969), 259.

Avi Pinkas (ed.), Farmyard Animals in Israel – Research, Humanism and Activity (Rishon Le-Ziyyon: The Association for Farmyard Animals, 2009 [Hebrew]), 169-199; “Milk Production – the Cow” [Hebrew], The Dairy Council, accessed March 22, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20110824054311/http://www.milk.org.il/cgi-webaxy/sal/sal.pl?lang=he&ID=645657_milk&act=show&dbid=katavot&dataid=cow.htm

Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969); E.C. Amoroso and P.A. Jewell, ‘The Exploitation of the Milk-Ejection Reflex by Primitive People’, in Man and Cattle: Proceedings of the Symposium on Domestication at the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24-26 May 1960, ed. A.E. Mourant and F.E. Zeuner (London: The Royal Anthropological Institute, 1963), 129-34.

Johannes Nicolaisen, Ecology and Culture of the Pastoral Tuareg (Copenhagen: National Museum, 1963), 63.

Additional References

The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of southeastern Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant.

For a comprehensive survey see: Daniel Zohary, Maria Hopf and Ehud Weiss, Domestication of Plants in Old World, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Scholars once believed that agriculture spread from a single Middle Eastern point of origin to the four corners of the world

For general discussions, dates and geographic spread see: C. Wesley Cowan and Patty Jo Watson, ed., The Origins of Agriculture: An International Perspective (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2006); Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell, ed., Handbook of South American Archaeology (New York: Springer, 2008); Li Liu and Xingcan Chen, The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012);

Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometers of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain.

“Crops”, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAOSTAT, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QC, accessed October 17, 2018.

The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks.

Clarck Spencer Larsen, The Agricultural Revolution as Environmental Catastrophe: Implications for Health and Lifestyle in the Holocene,” Quaternary International 150:1 (2006): 12-20.

About 18,000 years ago, the last ice age gave way to a period of global warming.

Peter U. Clark et al., “The Last Glacial Maximum,” Science 325:5941 (2009): 710-14.

Evidence of such settlements has been discovered throughout the Middle East, particularly in the Levant, where the Natufian culture flourished from 12,500 BC to 9500 BC.

For a series of studies encompassing the subject: Ofer Bar-Yosef and Fracois R. Valla, ed., Natufian Foragers in the Levant: Terminal Pleistocene Social Changes in Western Asia (Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory, 2013).

But, by 8500 BC, the Middle East was peppered with permanent villages such as Jericho

Simcha Lev-Yadun, Avi Gopher and Shahal Abbo, “The Cradle of Agriculture,” Science 288:5471 (2000): 1602-3.

Stonehenge dates to 2500 BC, and was built by a developed agricultural society.

Rodney Castleden, The Stonehenge People: An Exploration of Life in Neolithic Britain, 4700-2000 BC (London, New York: Routledge, 1990).

The structures at Göbekli Tepe are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by hunter-gatherers.

Oliver Dietrich et al., “The Role of Cult and Feasting in the Emergence of Neolithic Communities. New Evidence from Gobekli Tepe, South-Eastern Turkey,” Antiquity 86:333 (2012): 674-95.

Today the world contains about one billion sheep, one billion pigs, more than one billion cattle, and more than 25 billion chickens. And they are all over the globe.

“Number of Cattle Worldwide from 2012 to 2018 (in Million Head),” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/263979/global-cattle-population-since-1990/, accessed November 11, 2018; “Number of Chickens Worldwide from 1990 to 2016 (in Millions Animals), Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/263962/number-of-chickens-worldwide-since-1990/, accessed November 11, 2018; “Number of Pigs Worldwide from 2012 to 2018 (in Million Head), Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/263963/number-of-pigs-worldwide-since-1990/, accessed November 11, 2018; “Total Number of Sheep and Lambs in the United States from 2001 to 2018,” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/194403/total-number-of-sheep-and-lambs-in-the-us-since-2001/, accessed November 11, 2018.

In contrast, the vast majority of domesticated chickens and cattle are slaughtered at the age of between a few weeks and a few months

“About Chickens Farmed for Meat,” Compassion in World Farming, https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/chickens/meat-chickens/, accessed November 11, 2018; “About Calves Reared for Meat,” Compassion in World Farming, https://www.ciwf.org.uk/farm-animals/cows/veal-calves/, accessed November 11, 2018.

The Roman Emperor Caligula allegedly planned to appoint his favorite horse, Incitatus, to the consulship

Anthony A. Barrett, Caligula: The Corruption of Power (London, New York: Routledge, 2001), 45-6.

Chapter 6 – Building Pyramids

Existing References

Angus Maddison, The World Economy, vol. 2 (Paris: Development Centre of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006), 636; “Historical Estimates of World Population”, U.S. Census Bureau, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html.

Robert B. Mark, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 24.

Raymond Westbrook, ‘Old Babylonian Period’, in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, vol. 1, ed. Raymond Westbrook (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 361-430; Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 71-142; M. E. J. Richardson, Hammurabi’s Laws: Text, Translation and Glossary (London: T & T Clark International, 2000).

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 76.

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 121.

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 122-23.

Roth, Law Collections, 133-34.

Constance Brittaine Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 99; Mary Martin McLaughlin, ‘Survivors and Surrogates: Children and Parents from the Ninth to Thirteenth Centuries’, in Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Household and Children, ed. Carol Neel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 81 n. 81; Lise E. Hull, Britain’s Medieval Castles (Westport: Praeger, 2006), 144.

Additional References

The Agricultural Revolution is one of the most controversial events in history. Some partisans proclaim that it set humankind on the road to prosperity and progress.

See for example: James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017); Graeme Barker, The Agricultural Revolution of Prehistory: Why Did Foragers Become Farmers? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Around 8500 BC the largest settlements in the world were villages such as Jericho, which contained a few hundred individuals.

For Jericho, see: Peter M.M.G. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (c.16,000-300 BC) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 57. For Catal Höyük, see: Andrew Fairbairn, “A History of Agriculture Production at Neolithic Çatalhöyük East, Turkey,” World Archaeology 37:2 (2005): 197-210.

It boasted over one million subjects and a standing army of 5400 soldiers.

Benjamin R. Foster, The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia (New York, London: Routledge, 2016), 4.

In 221 BC the Qin dynasty united China, and shortly afterwards Rome united the Mediterranean basin.

Edgar Kiser and Yong Cai, “War and Bureaucratization in Qin China: Exploring an Anomalous Case,” American Sociological Review 68:4 (2003): 511-39. For population and army of the Roman Empire, see: Walter Sceidel, “Roman Population Size: The Logic of the Debate,” in People, Land and Politics: Demographic Developments and the Transformation of Roman Italy, 300 BC-AD 14, ed. L. De Light and S.J. Northwood (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 23; Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century CE to the Third (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 10-11, 216-7.

In 1776 BC Babylon was the world’s biggest city. The Babylonian Empire was probably the world’s largest, with more than a million subjects.

“to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.”

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 76.

For example, judgements 196-199 and 209-214 read:

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 121.

If a superior man strikes a woman of superior class and thereby causes her to miscarry her fetus, he shall weigh and deliver 10 shekels of silver for her fetus.

Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia, 122-23.

These are the just decisions which Hammurabi, the able king, has established and thereby has directed the land along the course of truth and the correct way of life…

Roth, Law Collections, 133-34.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

“Declaration of Independence: A Transcription,” National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript, accessed November 20, 2018.

Most biological studies acknowledge only the existence of pleasure, which is more easily defined and measured

For a general discussion of the biology of happiness see: Bjorn Grinde, The Biology of Happiness (New York: Springer, 2012).

“You can do many things with bayonets, but it is rather uncomfortable to sit on them.”

David Lawdy, Napoleon’s Master: The Life of Prince Talleyrand (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), 174.

“Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.”

James Wyatt Cook, Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature (New York: Facts on File, 2008), 177.

Someone growing up in such conditions naturally concluded that a man’s true worth was determined by his place in the social hierarchy and by what other people said of him.

Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can.

For a general discussion, especially in context of human experience, see: Michael Ferber, Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism.

Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, 3rd ed. (London: Alcuin Academics, 2010).

While she did not believe that radioactivity could kill her, she nevertheless died of aplastic anemia, a disease caused by over-exposure to radioactive materials.

Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Marie Curie: A Biography (Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 2004), 137.

Chapter 7 – Memory Overload

Existing References

Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 63; Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englung, Archaic Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 36.

Marcia and Robert Ascher, Mathematics of the Incas- Code of the Quipu (New York: Dover Publications, 1981).

Gary Urton. Signs of the Inka Khipu (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Galen Brokaw. A History of the Khipu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Stephen D. Houston (ed.), The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 222.

The Secretary-General, United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on the In-depth Study on All Forms of Violence Against Women, delivered to the General Assembly, U.N. Doc. A/16/122/Add.1 (July 6, 2006), 89.

Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 113-29, 132-33.

Additional References

A female honeybee larva can, for example, grow up to be either a queen or a worker, depending on what food it is fed. Its DNA programs the necessary behaviors for whatever role it will fulfill in life.

John L. Capinera, ed., Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 717.

But when particularly complex societies began to appear in the wake of the Agricultural Revolution, a completely new type of information became vital—numbers.

For a comprehensive discussion, see: Caleb Everett, Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2017).

The first to overcome the problem were the ancient Sumerians, who lived in southern Mesopotamia.

For the Sumerian culture, see: Harriet Crawford, ed., The Sumerian World (New York: Routledge, 2013). For cuneiform writing system: Jean-Jacques Glassner, The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Marc van de Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History (London, New York: Routledge, 1999).

The Sumerian writing system did so by combining two types of signs, which were pressed in clay tablets.

C.B.F. Walker, Cuneiform (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 20.

The earliest messages our ancestors have left us read, for example, “29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim.”

Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 36-47.

Andean script was very different from its Sumerian counterpart.

Marcia and Robert Ascher, Mathematics of the Incas- Code of the Quipu (New York: Dover Publications, 1981).

For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, quipus were essential to the business of cities, kingdoms, and empires.

Gary Urton. Signs of the Inka Khipu (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003); Galen Brokaw. A History of the Khipu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

In fact, quipus were so effective and accurate that in the early years following the Spanish conquest of South America, the Spaniards themselves employed quipus in the work of administering their new empire.

Rebecca M. Seaman, ed., Conflict in the Early Americas (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2013), 306.

At roughly the same time, Egyptians developed another full script known as hieroglyphics. Other full scripts were developed in China around 1200 BC and in Central America around 1000–500 BC.

James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2013); Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, ed., The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221BC (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 75.

But what if you have accumulated thousands of them, as did one of Hammurabi’s contemporaries, King Zimrilim of Mari?

Michael D. Coogan, ed., The Oxford History of the Biblical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 34-41.

A writing exercise from a school in ancient Mesopotamia discovered by modern archeologists, gives us a glimpse into the lives of these students, some 4000 years ago:

Stephen D. Houston (ed.), The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 222.

Confusingly, these signs are known as Arabic numerals even though they were first invented by the Hindus Leila Avrin, Scribes, Script and Books: The Book Arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Chicago: American Library Association, 1991), 268.

Chapter 8 – There is No Justice in History

Existing References

Sheldon Pollock, ‘Axialism and Empire’, in Axial Civilizations and World History, ed. Johann P. Arnason, S. N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 397-451.

Harold M. Tanner, China: A History (Indianapolis: Hackett, Pub. Co., 2009), 34.

Ramesh Chandra, Identity and Genesis of Caste System in India (Delhi: Kalpaz Publications, 2005); Michael Bamshad et al., ‘Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Population’, Genome Research 11 (2001): 904-1004; Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Houston, First Writing, 196.

Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 113-29, 132-33.

Additional References

Hammurabi’s Code, for example, established a pecking order of superiors, commoners, and slaves. Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained.

M. E. J. Richardson, Hammurabi’s Laws: Text, Translation and Glossary (London: T & T Clark International, 2000).

Aristotle argued that slaves have a “slavish nature” whereas free people have a “free nature.” Their status in society is merely a reflection of their innate nature

Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 170-171.

According to a famous Hindu creation myth, the gods fashioned the world out of the body of a primeval being, the Purusa.

Sheldon Pollock, ‘Axialism and Empire’, in Axial Civilizations and World History, ed. Johann P. Arnason, S. N. Eisenstadt and Björn Wittrock (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 397-451.

The ancient Chinese believed that when the goddess Nü Wa created humans from earth, she kneaded aristocrats from fine yellow soil, whereas commoners were formed from brown mud.

Harold M. Tanner, China: A History (Indianapolis: Hackett, Pub. Co., 2009), 34.

If, in British-ruled India, an Untouchable, a Brahmin, a Catholic Irishman, and a Protestant Englishman had somehow developed exactly the same business acumen, they still would not have had the same chance of becoming rich.

For a general discussion on the subject see: Susan Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

For instance, many scholars surmise that the Hindu caste system took shape when Indo-Aryan people invaded the Indian subcontinent about 3000 years ago, subjugating the local population.

Asko Parpola, The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). See also: Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Long after the Indo-Aryan invasion was forgotten, Indians continued to believe in the caste system and to abhor the pollution caused by caste mixing.

Secondly, in Africa there already existed a well-developed slave trade (exporting slaves mainly to the Middle East), whereas in Europe slavery was very rare

Toby Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Thirdly, and most importantly, American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti and Brazil were plagued by malaria and yellow fever, which had originated in Africa.

J.R. McNeill, Mosquito Empire: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 238-9.

Theologians argued that Africans descend from Ham, son of Noah, saddle by his father with a curse that his offspring would be slaves.

Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London, New York: Verso, 1997), 64-76. For perceptions of inferior intelligence and morality, see also: Curtis J. Evans, The Burden of Black Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution outlawed slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment mandated that citizenship and the equal protection of the law could not be denied on the basis of race.

Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Kurt T. Lash, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

The vicious circle did not stop there. As anti-black stigmas grew stronger, they were translated into a system of “Jim Crow” laws and norms that were meant to safeguard the racial order.

John P. Jackson and Nadine M. Weidman, Race, Racism and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Leslie V. Tischauser, Jim Crow Laws (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2012).

Clennon King, a black student who applied to the University of Mississippi in 1958, was forcefully committed to a mental asylum.

Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2009), 80-98.

American aesthetic culture was built around white standards of beauty.

Amoaba Gooden, “Visual Representations of Feminine Beauty in the Black Press: 1915-1950”, The Journal of Pan African Studies 4:4 (2011), 81-96; Treva B. Lindsey, “Black No More: Skin Bleaching and the Emergence of New Negro Womanhood Beauty Culture,” The Journal of Pan African Studies 4:4 (2011), 97-116.

Some of the earliest Chinese texts are oracle bones, dating to 1200 BC, used to divine the future.

Houston, First Writing, 196.

More than 3000 years later, when Communist China enacted the “one child” policy, many Chinese families continued to regard the birth of a girl as a misfortune.

Judith Banister, “Shortage of Girls in China Today,” Journal of Population Research 21:1 (2004): 19-45; Chan Cecilia Lai-wan, Eric Blyth and Celia Hoi-yan Chan, “Attitudes to and Practices Regarding Sex Selection in China,” Prenatal Diagnosis 26:7 (2006): 610-3.

As of 2006, there were still 53 countries where a husband could not be prosecuted for the rape of his wife. Even in Germany, rape laws were amended only in 1997 to create a legal category of marital rape.

For instance, in democratic Athens of the fifth century BC, an individual possessing a womb had no independent legal status and was forbidden to participate in popular assemblies or to be a judge

For women in ancient Athens, see: Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 113-29.

Queen Olympias of Macedon was one of the most temperamental and forceful women of the ancient world, and even had her own husband, King Philip, assassinated

Joyce E. Salisbury, ed., Women in the Ancient World (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001), 256-7.

According to one theory, insect wings evolved millions of years ago from body protrusions on flightless bugs.

For this and other theories see: David E. Alexander, On the Wing: Insects, Pterosaurs, Birds, Bats and the Evolution of Animal Flight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 74-129.

Chimpanzees, for example, use sex to cement political alliances, establish intimacy, and defuse tensions.

See the classic: Frans B. M. de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes, 25th anniversary ed. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007).

For example, there are far-reaching differences in the behavior, desires, dress, and even body posture expected from women in classical Athens and women in modern Athens

Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 113-29, 132-33.

The most common theory points to the fact that men are stronger than women, and that they have used their greater physical power to force women into submission.

Richard C. Lewontin, Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature (New York: Penguin, 1984), 132-163.

Recent studies of the hormonal and cognitive systems of men and women strengthen the assumption that men indeed have more aggressive and violent tendencies, and are therefore, on average, better suited to serve as common soldiers.

Gail S. Anderson, Biological Influences on Criminal Behavior (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2007), 129-53.

“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers,”

Gordon Corrigan, Wellington: A Military Life (London, New York: Hambledon and London, 2001), 255.

The French Empire in Africa was established and defended by the sweat and blood of Senegalese, Algerians, and working-class Frenchmen.

See: Myron Echenberg, “Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class in the French Colonial Army: The Black African Tirailleurs, 1857-1958,” in Ethnic Armies: Polyethnic Armed Forces from the Time of the Habsburgs to the Age of the Superpowers, ed. N.F. Dreisziger (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990), 50-68; Ruth Ginio, The French Army and Its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization (Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). For a general survey see: David Killingray and David Omissi, ed., Guardians of Empire: The Armed Forces of the Colonial Powers, c.1700-1964 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).

“You do not waste good iron to make nails,”

Kai Filipiak, ed., Civil-Military Relations in Chinese History: From Ancient China to the Communist Takeover (New York: Routledge, 2015), 239.

As men competed against each other for the opportunity to impregnate fertile women, an individual’s chances of reproduction depended above all on his ability to outperform and defeat other men.

N.P. Li and D.T. Kenrick, “Sex Similarities and Differences in Preferences for Short-term Mates: What, Whether, and Why,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:3 (2006), 468-89; J.K. Maner, C.N. DeWall and M.T. Gailliot, “Selective Attention to Signs of Success: Social Dominance and Early Stage Interpersonal Perception,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34:4 (2008), 488-501; P.W. Turke and L.L. Betzig, “Those Who Can Do: Wealth, Status, and Reproductive Success on Ifaluk,” Ethnology and Sociobiology 6:2 (1985), 79-87.

A woman, on the other hand, had no problem finding a man willing to impregnate her.

Anne Campbell, “Female Competition: Causes, Constraints, Content and Contexts,” The Journal of Sex Research 41:1 (2004), 16-26; Anne Campbell, “Staying Alive: Evolution, Culture, and Women’s Intrasexual Aggression,” Behavioral and Brain Science 22:2 (1999), 203-14.

There are many species of animals, such as elephants and bonobo chimpanzees, in which the dynamics between dependent females and competitive males results in a matriarchal society.

T.N.C. Vidya and R. Sukumar, “Social and Reproductive Behavior in Elephants,” Current Science 89:7 (2005), 1200-7.

Part III – The Unification of Humankind

Chapter 9 – The Arrow of History

Existing References

Additional References

“It is better to die,” declared the barons, “than to live with shame. If someone questions your honor, only blood can wipe out the insult. And what is better in life than to see your enemies flee before you, and their pretty daughters trembling at your feet?”
Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Chapter 10 – The Scent of Money

Existing References

Francisco López de Gómara, Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, vol. 1, ed. D. Joaquin Ramirez Cabañes (Mexico City: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1943), 106.

Andrew M. Watson, ‘Back to Gold – and Silver’, Economic History Review 20:1 (1967), 11-12; Jasim Alubudi, Repertorio Bibliográfico del Islam (Madrid: Vision Libros, 2003), 194.

Watson, ‘Back to Gold – and Silver’, 17-18.

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2011).

Glyn Davies, A History of Money: from Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), 15.

Szymon Laks, Music of Another World, trans. Chester A. Kisiel (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1989), 88-89. The Auschwitz’s “market” was restricted to certain classes of prisoners, and conditions changed dramatically across time.

See also Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 4.

For information on barley money I have relied on an unpublished Ph.D. thesis: Refael Benvenisti, Economic Institutions of Ancient Assyrian Trade in the Twentieth to Eighteenth Centuries BC (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 2011). See also Norman Yoffee, ‘The Economy of Ancient Western Asia’, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, ed. J. M. Sasson (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1995), 1387-99; R. K. Englund, ‘Proto-Cuneiform Account-Books and Journals’, in Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization, and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East, ed. Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2004), 21-46; Marvin A. Powell, ‘A Contribution to the History of Money in Mesopotamia prior to the Invention of Coinage’, in Festschrift Lubor Matouš, ed. B. Hruška and G. Komoróczy (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, 1978), 211-43; Marvin A. Powell, ‘Money in Mesopotamia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 39:3 (1996), 224-42; John F. Robertson, ‘The Social and Economic Organization of Ancient Mesopotamian Temples’, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, ed. Sasson, 443-500; M. Silver, ‘Modern Ancients’, in Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World: Means of Transmission and Cultural Interaction, ed. R. Rollinger and U. Christoph (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004), 65-87; Daniel C. Snell, ‘Methods of Exchange and Coinage in Ancient Western Asia’, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, vol. 1, ed. Sasson, 1487-97.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 11 – Imperial Visions

Existing References

Nahum Megged, The Aztecs (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1999 [Hebrew]), 103.

Tacitus, Agricola, ch. 30 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 220-21.

A. Fienup-Riordan, The Nelson Island Eskimo: Social Structure and Ritual Distribution (Anchorage: Alaska Pacific University Press, 1983), p. 10.

Yuri Pines, ‘Nation States, Globalization and a United Empire – the Chinese Experience (third to fifth centuries BC)’, Historia 15 (1995), 54 [Hebrew].

Alexander Yakobson, ‘Us and Them: Empire, Memory and Identity in Claudius’ Speech on Bringing Gauls into the Roman Senate’, in On Memory: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Doron Mendels (Oxford: Peter Land, 2007), 23-24.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 12 – The Law of Religion

Existing References

W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2008), 536-37.

Robert Jean Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France, 1483-1610 (London: Fontana Press, 1996), 424.

Marie Harm and Hermann Wiehle, Lebenskunde fuer Mittelschulen – Fuenfter Teil. Klasse 5 fuer Jungen (Halle: Hermann Schroedel Verlag, 1942), 152-57.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 13 – The Secret of Success

Existing References

Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Additional References

Coming Soon

Part IV – The Scientific Revolution

Chapter 14 – The Discovery of Ignorance

Existing References

David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 344-45; Angus Maddison, The World Economy, vol. 2 (Paris: Development Centre of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001), 636; ‘Historical Estimates of World Population’, U.S. Census Bureau, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html.

Maddison, The World Economy, vol. 1, 261.

“Gross Domestic Product 2009”, The World Bank, Data and Statistics, accessed December 10, 2010, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD

Christian, Maps of Time, 141.

The largest contemporary cargo ship can carry about 100,000 tons. In 1470 all the world’s fleets could together carry no more than 320,000 tons. By 1570 total global tonnage was up to 730,000 tons (Maddison, The World Economy, vol. 1, 97).

The world’s largest bank – The Royal Bank of Scotland – has reported in 2007 deposits worth 1.3 trillion dollar. That’s five times the annual global production in 1500. See ‘Annual Report and Accounts 2008’, The Royal Bank of Scotland, 35, accessed December 10, 2010, https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/annual-reports/rbs-group-accounts-2008.pdf

Ferguson, Ascent of Money, 185-98.

Maddison, The World Economy, vol. 1, 31; Wrigley, English Population History, 295; Christian, Maps of Time, 450, 452; ‘World Health Statistic Report 2009’, 35-45, World Health Organization, accessed December 10, 2010 https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/gho-documents/world-health-statistic-reports/en-whs09-full.pdf

Wrigley, English Population History, 296.

‘England, Interim Life Tables, 1980-82 to 2007-09’, Office for National Statistics, accessed March 22, 2012 https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20120314233532/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-61850

Michael Prestwich, Edward I (Berkley: University of California Press, 1988), 125-26.

Jennie B. Dorman et al., ‘The age-1 and daf-2 Genes Function in a Common Pathway to Control the Lifespan of Caenorhabditis elegans’, Genetics 141:4 (1995), 1399-1406; Koen Houthoofd et al., ‘Life Extension via Dietary Restriction is Independent of the Ins/IGF-1 Signaling Pathway in Caenorhabditis elegans’, Experimental Gerontology 38:9 (2003), 947-54.

Shawn M. Douglas, Ido Bachelet, and George M. Church, ‘A Logic-Gated Nanorobot for Targeted Transport of Molecular Payloads’, Science 335:6070 (2012): 831-4; Dan Peer et al., ‘Nanocarriers As An Emerging Platform for Cancer Therapy’, Nature Nanotechnology 2 (2007): 751-60; Dan Peer et al., ‘Systemic Leukocyte-Directed siRNA Delivery Revealing Cyclin D1 as an Anti-Inflammatory Target’, Science 319:5863 (2008): 627-30.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 15 – The Marriage of Science and Empire

Existing References

Stephen R. Bown, Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Matin’s Press, 2004); Kenneth John Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

James Cook, The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific, as Told by Selections of his Own Journals 1768-1779, ed. Archibald Grenfell Price (New York : Dover Publications, 1971), 16-17; Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 5; J.C. Beaglehole, ed., The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 588.

Mark, Origins of the Modern World, 81.

Christian, Maps of Time, 436.

John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire since 1405 (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 239.

Soli Shahvar, ‘Railroads i. The First Railroad Built and Operated in Persia’, in the Online Edition of Encyclopaedia Iranica, last modified April 7, 2008, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/railroads-i; Charles Issawi, ‘The Iranian Economy 1925-1975: Fifty Years of Economic Development’, in Iran under the Pahlavis, ed. George Lenczowski (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 156.

Mark, The Origins of the Modern World, 46.

Kirkpatrik Sale, Christopher Columbus and the Conquest of Paradise (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2006), 7-13.

Edward M. Spiers, The Army and Society: 1815-1914 (London: Longman, 1980), 121; Robin Moore, ‘Imperial India, 1858-1914’, in The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, vol. 3, ed. Andrew Porter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 442.

Vinita Damodaran, ‘Famine in Bengal: A Comparison of the 1770 Famine in Bengal and the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur’, The Medieval History Journal 10:1-2 (2007), 151.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 16 – The Capitalist Creed

Existing References

Maddison, World Economy, vol. 1, 261, 264; ‘Gross National Income Per Capita 2009, Atlas Method and PPP’, The World Bank, accessed December 10, 2010, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf.

The mathematics of my bakery example are not as accurate as they could be. Since banks are allowed to loan ten dollars for every dollar they keep in their possession, of every million dollar deposited in the bank, the bank can loan out to entrepreneurs only about $909,000 while keeping $91,000 in its vaults. But to make life easier for the readers I preferred to work with round numbers. Besides, banks do not always follow the rules.

Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 91.

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (London: Zed Books, 2002), 22.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 17 – The Wheels of Industry

Existing References

Mark, Origins of the Modern World, 109.

Nathan S. Lewis and Daniel G. Nocera, ‘Powering the Planet: Chemical Challenges in Solar Energy Utilization’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:43 (2006), 15731.

Kazuhisa Miyamoto (ed.), ‘Renewable Biological Systems for Alternative Sustainable Energy Production’, FAO Agricultural Services Bulletin 128 (Osaka: Osaka University, 1997), chapter 2.1.1, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.fao.org/docrep/W7241E/w7241e06.htm#2.1.1percent20solarpercent20energy; James Barber, ‘Biological Solar Energy’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 365:1853 (2007), 1007.

‘International Energy Outlook 2010’, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 9, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/0484(2010).pdf.

S. Venetsky, ‘”Silver” from Clay’, Metallurgist 13:7 (1969), 451; Aftalion, Fred, A History of the International Chemical Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 64; A. J. Downs, Chemistry of Aluminum, Gallium, Indium and Thallium (Glasgow: Blackie Academic & Professional, 1993), 15.

Jan Willem Erisman et al, ‘How a Century of Ammonia Synthesis Changed the World’ in Nature Geoscience 1 (2008), 637.

G. J. Benson and B. E. Rollin (eds.), The Well-Being of Farm Animals: Challenges and Solutions (Ames, IA: Blackwell, 2004); M .C. Appleby, J. A. Mench, and B. O. Hughes, Poultry Behaviour and Welfare (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2004); J. Webster, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005); C. Druce and P. Lymbery, Outlawed in Europe: How America Is Falling Behind Europe in Farm Animal Welfare (New York: Archimedean Press, 2002).

Harry Harlow and Robert Zimmermann, ‘Affectional Responses in the Infant Monkey’, Science 130:3373 (1959), 421-432; Harry Harlow, ‘The Nature of Love’, American Psychologist 13 (1958), 673-685; Laurens D. Young et al., ‘Early stress and later response to separation in rhesus monkeys’, American Journal of Psychiatry 130:4 (1973), 400-405; K. D. Broad, J. P. Curley and E. B. Keverne, ‘Mother-infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Soceity B 361:1476 (2006), 2199-2214; Florent Pittet et al., ‘Effects of maternal experience on fearfulness and maternal behaviour in a precocial bird’, Animal Behavior (March 2013), In Press- available online at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213000547)separation

“National Institute of Food and Agriculture”, United States Department of Agriculture, accessed December 10, 2010, https://www.nifa.usda.gov/ (the CSREES department of the USDA has become the NIFA in 2009).

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 18 – A Permanent Revolution

Existing References

Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002); Michael Gleich et al., Life Counts: Cataloging Life on Earth (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002); Sarah Catherine Walpole et al., ‘The Weight of Nations: An Estimation of Adult Human Biomass’, BMC Public Health 12:439 (2012), http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/439

William T. Jackman, The Development of Transportation in Modern England (London: Frank Cass & co., 1966), 324- 27; H. J. Dyos and D.H. Aldcroft, British Transport – An economic survey from the seventeenth century to the twentieth (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969), 124-31; Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

For a detailed discussion of the unprecedented peacefulness of the last few decades, see in particular Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011); Joshua S. Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide (New York, N.Y.: Dutton, 2011); Gat, War in Human Civilization.

‘World Report on Violence and Health: Summary, Geneva 2002’, World Health Organization, accessed December 10, 2010, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42512/9241545623_eng.pdf. For mortality rates in previous eras see: Lawrence H. Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

‘World Health Report, 2004’, World Health Organization, 124, accessed 10 December, 2010, https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42512/9241545623_eng.pdf and https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42891/924156265X.pdf

Raymond C. Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origin of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 21. See also Gat, War in Human Civilization, 129-31; Keeley, War before Civilization.

Manuel Eisner, ‘Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal Violence’, British Journal of Criminology 41:4 (2001), 618-638; Manuel Eisner, ‘Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime’, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research 30 (2003), 83-142; ‘World Report on Violence and Health: Summary, Geneva 2002’, World Health Organization, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2001/en/whr01_annex_en.pdf; ‘World Health Report, 2004’, World Health Organization, 124, accessed 10 December, 2010, http://www.who.int/whr/2004/en/report04_en.pdf.

Walker and Bailey, ‘Body Counts in Lowland South American Violence,’ 30.

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 19 – And They Lived Happily Ever After

Existing References

For both the psychology and biochemistry of happiness, the following are good starting points: Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis:Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Basic Books, 2006); R. Wright, The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1994); M. Csikszentmihalyi, ‘If We Are So Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy?’, American Psychologist 54:10 (1999): 821-27; F. A. Huppert, N. Baylis and B. Keverne, ed., The Science of Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Happiness, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2001); Ed Diener (ed.), Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener (New York: Springer, 2009); Michael Eid and Randy J. Larsen (eds.), The Science of Subjective Well-Being (New York: Guilford Press, 2008); Richard A. Easterlin (ed.), Happiness in Economics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Pub., 2002); Richard Layard, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005).

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Inglehart et al., “Development, Freedom, and Rising Happiness,” 278-281.

D. M. McMahon, The Pursuit of Happiness: A History from the Greeks to the Present (London: Allen Lane, 2006).

Additional References

Coming Soon

Chapter 20 – The End of Homo Sapiens

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Gary Walsh, ‘Therapeutic Insulins and Their Large-Scale Manufacture’, Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology 67:2 (2005), 151-59.

James G. Wallis et al., ‘Expression of a Synthetic Antifreeze Protein in Potato Reduces Electrolyte Release at Freezing Temperatures’, Plant Molecular Biology 35:3 (1997), 323-30.

Robert J. Wall et al., ‘Genetically Enhanced Cows Resist Intramammary Staphylococcus Aureus Infection’, Nature Biotechnology 23:4 (2005), 445-51.

Liangxue Lai et al., ‘Generation of Cloned Transgenic Pigs Rich in Omega-3 Fatty Acids’, Nature Biotechnology 24:4 (2006), 435-36.

Ya-Ping Tang et al., ‘Genetic Enhancement of Learning and Memory in Mice’, Nature 401 (1999), 63-69.

Zoe R. Donaldson and Larry J. Young, ‘Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Neurogenetics of Sociality’, Science 322:5903 (2008), 900–904; Zoe R. Donaldson, ‘Production of Germline Transgenic Prairie Voles (Microtus Ochrogaster) Using Lentiviral Vectors’, Biology of Reproduction 81:6 (2009), 1189-1195.

Terri Pous, ‘Siberian Discovery Could Bring Scientists Closer to Cloning Woolly Mammoth’, Time, September 17, 2012, accessed February 19, 2013; Pasqualino Loi et al, ‘Biological time machines: a realistic approach for cloning an extinct mammal’, Endangered Species Research 14 (2011), 227-233; Leon Huynen, Craig D. Millar and David M. Lambert, ‘Resurrecting ancient animal genomes: The extinct moa and more’, Bioessays 34 (2012), 661-669.

Nicholas Wade, ‘Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome’, New York Times, February 12, 2009, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/science/13neanderthal.html?_r=2&ref=science; Zack Zorich, ‘Should We Clone Neanderthals?’, Archaeology 63:2 (2009), accessed 10 December, 2010, http://www.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.html.

Robert H. Waterston et al., ‘Initial Sequencing and Comparative Analysis of the Mouse Genome’, Nature 420:6915 (2002), 520.

‘Hybrid Insect Micro Electromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS)’, Microsystems Technology Office, DARPA, accessed March 22, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20071008203450/http://www.darpa.gov/mto/programs/himems/index.html See also: Sally Adee, ‘Nuclear-Powered Transponder for Cyborg Insect’, IEEE Spectrum, December 2009, accessed December 10, 2010, http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/nuclearpowered-transponder-for-cyborg-insect?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feedpercent3A+IeeeSpectrum+percent28IEEE+Spectrumpercent29&utm_content=Google+Reader; Jessica Marshall, ‘The Fly Who Bugged Me’, New Scientist 197:2646 (2008), 40-43; Emily Singer, ‘Send In the Rescue Rats’, New Scientist 183:2466 (2004), 21-22; Susan Brown, ‘Stealth Sharks to Patrol the High Seas’, New Scientist 189:2541 (2006), 30-31.

Bill Christensen, ‘Military Plans Cyborg Sharks’, Live Science, March 7, 2006, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.livescience.com/technology/060307_shark_implant.html.

‘Cochlear Implants’, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, accessed March 22, 2012, http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/coch.aspx

Retina Implant, https://web.archive.org/web/20120724124153/http://www.retina-implant.de/en/doctors/technology/default.aspx

David Brown, ‘For 1st Woman With Bionic Arm, a New Life Is Within Reach’, The Washington Post, September 14, 2006, accessed December 10, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/13/AR2006091302271.html?nav=E8.

Miguel Nicolelis, Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains and Machines – and How It Will Change Our Lives (New York: Times Books, 2011).

Chris Berdik, ‘Turning Thought into Words’, BU Today, October 15, 2008, accessed March 22, 2012, http://www.bu.edu/today/2008/turning-thoughts-into-words/

Jonathan Fildes, ‘Artificial Brain “10 years away”’, BBC News, July 22, 2009, accessed 19 September, 2012, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8164060.stm

Radoje Drmanac et al., ‘Human Genome Sequencing Using Unchained Base Reads on Self-Assembling DNA Nanoarrays’, Science 327:5961 (2010), 78-81; ‘Complete Genomics’ website: http://www.completegenomics.com/; Rob Waters, ‘Complete Genomics Gets Gene Sequencing under 5000$ (Update 1)’, Bloomberg, November 5, 2009, accessed December 10, 2010; http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWutnyE4SoWw; Fergus Walsh, ‘Era of Personalized Medicine Awaits’, BBC News, last updated April 8, 2009, accessed March 22, 2012, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7954968.stm; Leena Rao, ‘PayPal Co-Founder And Founders Fund Partner Joins DNA Sequencing Firm Halcyon Molecular’, TechCrunch, September 24, 2009, accessed December 10, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/paypal-co-founder-and-founders-fund-partner-joins-dna-sequencing-firm-halcyon-molecular/.

Additional References

Coming Soon