George Epstein: The Big Picture

From 40,000 B.C. when we Homo Sapiens took over from the Neanderthals until about 10,000 B.C. when we started growing crops and domesticating animals, we had it pretty good. Sure, we died young. Infections and all sorts of trauma killed us off. We spent most of our time hunting and gathering so that we wouldn’t starve and we were frequently cold and wet. Humans didn’t have a lot of disease because germs need crowds to serve as incubators, and we were small numbers in vast areas. We had some time to do cave painting, invent crafts and tools and sit around the fire telling stories. We buried our dead and probably made music to make life a bit richer. We had good chiefs and bad chiefs, but they couldn’t really rule over us. It was easy for us to get together and push a bad leader out. Let’s call this the Camping Out stage of Man.

Then agriculture came along. And for most of the next 12,000 years we lived under the thumb of pharaohs, kings, tsars and khans. Farming meant there was a surplus of food. Ninety percent of folks had to work the fields to feed everyone, but that left room for artists, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, priests, generals and royal families. Cities (and disease) grew up. Rulers controlled armies and overseers and whips. Homer, Buddha, Confucius, Moses, Socrates, Plato, Jesus and Mohammed brought us wisdom and ideals. We seemed to have left life as slightly brighter animals behind. But having enough food meant we could support armies. We discovered a whole new way to act like barbarians. War. Much of our search for technology was to get harder, sharper swords. Our domesticated animals helped us farm but also pulled our chariots and carried our knights. The stirrup made transportation faster and safer, but it made real cavalry the dominant force for 1,000 years. This was the Serfs, Peons, and Slaves Era — because that’s what the vast majority of us were.