The History of the Homo Sapiens Species
Incapable of limiting growth, the Homo Sapiens species extinguished itself at the dawn of the scientific age.
The Homo Sapiens species evolved in Africa alongside various other Homo species that are now extinct. Sometimes between about 60 and 70 thousand years ago, a small band of humans left Africa and began spreading to the rest of the planet. Along the way, they drove to extinction other Homo species that left Africa earlier, for instance, the Neanderthals. The latter lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years until Homo Sapiens arrived there about 30,000 years ago.
About 10,000 years ago, agriculture had been discovered, which quickly replaced hunting/gathering and allowed a major expansion of the species to several hundred million.
The last big continent to gain an extensive population was America. Although humans have lived in America for about 20,000 years, a significant population increase occurred only after the technologically more advanced Europeans have arrived.
The three centuries following the event of European arrival to America witnessed the emergence of modern science and scientific thinking in Europe, giving rise to the beginnings of large-scale industrialization.
Within 200 years of the beginnings of large-scale industrialization, humanity learned about the Universe and Earth’s insignificance within it. A vast amount of understanding was brought to Nature’s laws, and their quantum character had been discovered. As a result, among other things, humanity learned to access nuclear energy; one use of nuclear energy was warfare.
America’s population density became roughly on par with the other continents. Humanity’s venture outside Africa has been completed. There were no more horizons left to head for; the planet was brimming with more than 7 billion people.
Although human knowledge’s frontiers expanded tremendously, the vast majority, over 99.9%, of humanity remained completely oblivious of this. Their thinking and behavior remained in past millennia, namely, driven by beliefs based on a Supernatural and, commanded by all religions, blithely expanding population. All the while, humanity had at its disposal the capabilities afforded by science. The large population armed with technology began to exhaust the planet’s capabilities. Scarcities emerged, including shortages of energy. It was not possible to harvest the Sun’s energy to such a degree that the population, by then over 12 billion, could have lived comfortably. Fossil fuels were reaching their end, and reliance on nuclear energy kept increasing. The standard of living for most humans declined, pitting one against the other. In the large, poor, warring populations, diseases once conquered, as well as new ones, took hold. Food shortages, even famine, became the norm. Such discontents resulted in wars fought on ever more considerable scales, usually under the aegis of religion.
Less than 100 years after the first use of nuclear weapons, they were used again in a religious conflict. After another 70 years, and with the population exceeding 15 billion, a major nuclear conflict took place. This conflict disrupted the technological underpinnings that sustained the swollen numbers of humanity, and conditions retreated to pre-industrialization norms. Trying to use the exhausted resources of the planet, and with elevated radiation levels largely due to nuclear warheads having hit nuclear power plants and dispersing their radioactive materials planet-wide, survival became difficult. By a decade after the conflict, the population shrunk to below one hundred million as humanity succumbed to disease and starvation.
The last member of the Homo Sapiens species died 350 years after human knowledge took the leap of learning about the Universe and humanity’s place within it.
An earlier version published at http://www.infinitetime.org.
