We live in times of great upheaval. The future seems less certain and less predictable than it did a few years ago. Is our species possibly “on the verge of extinction”?
However, the situation is not quite as dramatic as the subtitle of the new book by the British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Henry Gee sounds. Strictly speaking, the decline of Homo sapiens began a good 50,000 years ago. From this point on, it was able to spread almost all over the world without major competition from other hominins, which led to a reduction in genetic diversity. Sedentarism and agriculture reinforced this. Unbalanced diets, increasing dependence on a few crops and living closely together in larger groups promoted disease and increased the risk of famine due to bad harvests.
Nevertheless, the end of the hunter-gatherer existence led to rapid population growth, which continues to this day in many areas of the world. However, around the year 2100 the trend will reverse and lead to a noticeable global decline in population numbers from the following two centuries at the latest. Even without unpredictable “accelerators” such as climate change, pandemics or military conflicts, humanity could reach a critical point over the next 10,000 years.
One way to delay the inevitable extinction, at least in the long term, may be to colonize space. As committed as the author is to promoting this idea, he has to admit that there are many imponderables and open questions. A larger number of people living permanently on the Moon or Mars is currently nothing more than a vague vision of the future.
Here the entertaining, easy-to-understand book turns out to be quite speculative. Before that, Henry Gee does a very good job of summarizing the development of Homo sapiens up to the many challenges of the present and near future in a compact and clear manner. CChristopher Walter
Henry Gee
The rise and fall of humanity
Rowohlt Verlag, 288 pages, €24
ISBN 978-3-498-00773-7