Like Ants : A Model for Human Civilization?
ISBN: 9781628943085
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Algora Publishing
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Science: Biology/ Natural History; Science;

Turnbull challenges conventional wisdom about how human civilization developed. Most species survive for half a million years, while humanity is already about one million years old. We survive because we cooperate, he says. However, ants have been around for at least 100 times as long. Should we act more like them, or have we gone too far already?Citing recognized scientists and modern evidence, he argues that early humans evolved on coasts and rivers -- where most people live today -- rather than on the savanna that conventional wisdom sees as our first home. From this premise about humanity's origins right up to our convictions about the progress brought by the Industrial Revolution and the women's movement, his analysis turns some of our firm beliefs on their heads.Tantalizing and at times shocking, the evidence he presents suggests that the agricultural revolution that is often presented as the beginning of civilization was actually the invention of life-long slavery, and that civilization is a system in which a small group of the elite parasites he describes as takers is supported by a population of productive workers he describes as makers.Turnbull then shows how the development of armies, religion, propaganda, industry, liberal social attitudes and the attributes of civilization as we think of it seem to be moving us closer to the social structure of ant and termite colonies.Is that the way of humanity's future?


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