A Brief History of Mankind and Industrial Civilization

Here is a brief history of Homo Sapiens and human civilization summarized in a few paragraphs.

From Douglas Dixon’s book After Man: A Zoology of the Future

“””The first men were plant gatherers and animal hunters and differed little in life style from other herbivorous and carnivorous animals around them. They had sufficient intellect to devise tools and weapons and a social organization that made hunting and food gathering more efficient. Neither of these things, however, made any serious impact on the environment.   

The first great change in their life style came when, instead of hunting and gathering animals and plants they brought them together and looked after them in a single location. This eliminated the element of danger present in hunting and reduced the probability of starvation, as there was no longer the possibility of returning empty-handed from a foraging expedition. It was the beginning of agriculture.

At first the areas under cultivation were small and relatively insignificant. However, the improvements to early man’s way of life were so dramatic that his population increased markedly and more and more land had be cleared of its natural vegetation to make room for crops and grazing animals.

As man’s ingenuity and tool-making ability grew, he invented industrial processes that could produce tools with greater speed and less trouble than before. This inevitably involved heat, and forests were cut down to supply wood and mountainsides were dug away to reach coal to provide fuel. Within a few thousand years the landscape of earth was changed out of all recognition.

Man’s knowledge grew, most significantly in the field of medical science. Accidents and diseases that help to keep natural populations in check were overcome or reduced in their effect by man’s endeavours. Genetic defects that, in the wild, would have proved fatal and would have been eliminated by natural selection were perpetuated because their possessors were allowed to live and reproduce. World population increased exponentially and hardly a region of the earth’s surface remained untouched by man. 

The ultimate effect was that, whereas other animals change and adapt through the slow process of evolution to fit into their environment, man was able to change his environment to suit his current needs, reaping a short-term advantage in the process. Living outside evolution each stage in his rapid cultural development was passed on to next generation, not through his genes but by learning. Although he avoided the unpleasent effects of natural selection, he also did without its long-term benefits and in short called a halt to evolution as it applied to himself. The result was a world overburdened by a population of beings unable to survive without their own conscious intervention, a world given over to the essential needs of man, a world poisoned by his waste.

Ultimately the earth could no longer supply the raw materials needed for man’s agriculture, industry or medicine, and as shortage of supply caused the collapse of one structure after another, his whole complex and interlocking social and technological edifice crumbled. Man, no longer able to adapt, rushed uncontrollably to his inevitable extinction. 

With the dominant life form gone the animal world would enter a period of evolutionary chaos that lasted tens of thousands of years. However, man’s extinction provided the impetus for the formation of many new species of animals and his disappearance was of fundamental importance in shaping the world that emerged 50 million years later.”””