over continents. But all of them belonged to the genus Homo.

They
were all human beings.
It’s a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a
straight line of descent, with Ergaster begetting Erectus, Erectus
begetting the Neanderthals, and the Neanderthals evolving into us.
This linear model gives the mistaken impression that at any
particular moment only one type of human inhabited the earth, and
that all earlier species were merely older models of ourselves. The
truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000
years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several
human species. And why not? Today there are many species of
foxes, bears and pigs. The earth of a hundred millennia ago was
walked by at least six di erent species of man. It’s our current
exclusivity, not that multi-species past, that is peculiar – and
perhaps incriminating. As we will shortly see, we Sapiens have good
reasons to repress the memory of our siblings.

The Cost of Thinking

Despite their many di erences, all human species share several
de ning characteristics. Most notably, humans have extraordinarily
large brains compared to other animals. Mammals weighing sixty
kilograms have an average brain size of 200 cubic centimetres. The
earliest men and women, 2.5 million years ago, had brains of about
600 cubic centimetres. Modern Sapiens sport a brain averaging
1,200–1,400 cubic centimetres. Neanderthal brains were even
bigger.
That evolution should select for larger brains may seem to us like,
well, a no-brainer. We are so enamoured of our high intelligence
that we assume that when it comes to cerebral power, more must be
better. But if that were the case, the feline family would also have
produced cats who could do calculus. Why is genus Homo the only
one in the entire animal kingdom to have come up with such
massive thinking machines?
 The fact is that a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body. It’s
not easy to carry around, especially when encased inside a massive
skull. It’s even harder to fuel. In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts
for about 2–3 per cent of total body weight, but it consumes 25 per
cent of the body’s energy when the body is at rest. By comparison,
the brains of other apes require only 8 per cent of rest-time energy.
Archaic humans paid for their large brains in two ways. Firstly, they
spent more time in search of food. Secondly, their muscles
atrophied. Like a government diverting money from defence to
education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons. It’s
hardly a foregone conclusion that this is a good strategy for survival
on the savannah. A chimpanzee can’t win an argument with a Homo
sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll.
Today our big brains pay o nicely, because we can produce cars
and guns that enable us to move much faster than chimps, and shoot
them from a safe distance instead of wrestling. But cars and guns are
a recent phenomenon. For more than 2 million years, human neural
networks kept growing and growing, but apart from some int
knives and pointed sticks, humans had precious little to show for it.
What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain
during those 2 million years? Frankly, we don’t know.
Another singular human trait is that we walk upright on two legs.
Standing up, it’s easier to scan the savannah for game or enemies,
and arms that are unnecessary for locomotion are freed for other
purposes, like throwing stones or signalling. The more things these
hands could do, the more successful their owners were, so
evolutionary pressure brought about an increasing concentration of
nerves and nely tuned muscles in the palms and ngers. As a
result, humans can perform very intricate tasks with their hands. In
particular, they can produce and use sophisticated tools. The rst
evidence for tool production dates from about 2.5 million years ago,
and the manufacture and use of tools are the criteria by which
archaeologists recognise ancient humans.
Yet walking upright has its downside. The skeleton of our primate
ancestors developed for millions of years to support a creature that
walked on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adjusting to an
upright position was quite a challenge, especially when the
sca olding had to support an extra-large cranium. Humankind paid
for its lofty vision and industrious hands with backaches and sti
necks.
Women paid extra. An upright gait required narrower hips,
constricting the birth canal – and this just when babies’ heads were
getting bigger and bigger. Death in childbirth became a major
hazard for human females. Women who gave birth earlier, when the
infants brain and head were still relatively small and supple, fared
better and lived to have more children. Natural selection
consequently favoured earlier births. And, indeed, compared to
other animals, humans are born prematurely, when many of their
vital systems are still under-developed. A colt can trot shortly after
birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a
few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependent for many
years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education.
This fact has contributed greatly both to humankind’s
extraordinary social abilities and to its unique social problems. Lone
mothers could hardly forage enough food for their o spring and
themselves with needy children in tow. Raising children required
constant help from other family members and neighbours. It takes a
tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured those capable of
forming strong social ties. In addition, since humans are born
underdeveloped, they can be educated and socialised to a far greater
extent than any other animal. Most mammals emerge from the
womb like glazed earthenware emerging from a kiln – any attempt
at remoulding will scratch or break them. Humans emerge from the
womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched
and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. This is why today
we can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist,
capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving.

*
contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the
ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans
themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are
majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have lled them
with self-con dence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana
republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of
the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position,
which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical
calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have
resulted from this over-hasty jump.

A Race of Cooks
A signi cant step on the way to the top was the domestication of
re. Some human species may have made occasional use of re as
early as 800,000 years ago. By about 300,000 years ago, Homo
erectus, Neanderthals and the forefathers of Homo sapiens were using
re on a daily basis. Humans now had a dependable source of light
and warmth, and a deadly weapon against prowling lions. Not long
afterwards, humans may even have started deliberately to torch
their neighbourhoods. A carefully managed re could turn
impassable barren thickets into prime grasslands teeming with
game. In addition, once the re died down, Stone Age entrepreneurs
could walk through the smoking remains and harvest charcoaled
animals, nuts and tubers.
But the best thing re did was cook. Foods that humans cannot
digest in their natural forms – such as wheat, rice and potatoes –
became staples of our diet thanks to cooking. Fire not only changed
food’s chemistry, it changed its biology as well. Cooking killed
germs and parasites that infested food. Humans also had a far easier
time chewing and digesting old favourites such as fruits, nuts,
insects and carrion if they were cooked. Whereas chimpanzees
spend ve hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour su ces for
people eating cooked food.
 The advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food,
to devote less time to eating, and to make do with smaller teeth and
shorter intestines. Some scholars believe there is a direct link
between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human
intestinal track, and the growth of the human brain. Since long
intestines and large brains are both massive energy consumers, it’s
hard to have both. By shortening the intestines and decreasing their
energy consumption, cooking inadvertently opened the way to the
jumbo brains of Neanderthals and Sapiens.1
Fire also opened the rst signi cant gulf between man and the
other animals. The power of almost all animals depends on their
bodies: the strength of their muscles, the size of their teeth, the
breadth of their wings. Though they may harness winds and
currents, they are unable to control these natural forces, and are
always constrained by their physical design. Eagles, for example,
identify thermal columns rising from the ground, spread their giant
wings and allow the hot air to lift them upwards. Yet eagles cannot
control the location of the columns, and their maximum carrying
capacity is strictly proportional to their wingspan.
When humans domesticated re, they gained control of an
obedient and potentially limitless force. Unlike eagles, humans
could choose when and where to ignite a ame, and they were able
to exploit re for any number of tasks. Most importantly, the power
of re was not limited by the form, structure or strength of the
human body. A single woman with a int or re stick could burn
down an entire forest in a matter of hours. The domestication of re
was a sign of things to come.

Our Brothers’ Keepers

Despite the bene ts of re, 150,000 years ago humans were still
marginal creatures. They could now scare away lions, warm
themselves during cold nights, and burn down the occasional forest.
Yet counting all species together, there were still no more than
perhaps a million humans living between the Indonesian
archipelago and the Iberian peninsula, a mere blip on the ecological
radar.
Our own species, Homo sapiens, was already present on the world
stage, but so far it was just minding its own business in a corner of
Africa. We don’t know exactly where and when animals that can be
classi ed as Homo sapiens rst evolved from some earlier type of
humans, but most scientists agree that by 150,000 years ago, East
Africa was populated by Sapiens that looked just like us. If one of
them turned up in a modern morgue, the local pathologist would
notice nothing peculiar. Thanks to the blessings of re, they had
smaller teeth and jaws than their ancestors, whereas they had
massive brains, equal in size to ours.
Scientists also agree that about 70,000 years ago, Sapiens from
East Africa spread into the Arabian peninsula, and from there they
quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass.
When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of Eurasia was already
settled by other humans. What happened to them? There are two
con icting theories. The ‘Interbreeding Theory’ tells a story of
attraction, sex and mingling. As the African immigrants spread
around the world, they bred with other human populations, and
people today are the outcome of this interbreeding.
For example, when Sapiens reached the Middle East and Europe,
they encountered the Neanderthals. These humans were more
muscular than Sapiens, had larger brains, and were better adapted
to cold climes. They used tools and re, were good hunters, and
apparently took care of their sick and in rm. (Archaeologists have
discovered the bones of Neanderthals who lived for many years with
severe physical handicaps, evidence that they were cared for by
their relatives.) Neanderthals are often depicted in caricatures as the
archetypical brutish and stupid ‘cave people’, but recent evidence
has changed their image.
According to the Interbreeding Theory, when Sapiens spread into
Neanderthal lands, Sapiens bred with Neanderthals until the two
populations merged. If this is the case, then today’s Eurasians are
not pure Sapiens. They are a mixture of Sapiens and Neanderthals.