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Although we usually think of CrO - magnons as the first commitment, our most noble qualities, they have had to undertake two characteristics, and endeavours to the root causes of our current problems: our propensities other large quantities of murder and destruction our environment. Even in a central registry - magnetic resonance times the human fossil skull punctured sharp object, and cracked from the brain witnessed murder and cannibalism. The lightning speed with the neanderthals disappeared, in CrO - arrived magnons that genocide has now become a highly efficient. Our efficiency and the destruction of our own resource base, and the extinction of species by almost all major Australian animals, we colonial rule, Australia 5 million years ago, some large mammals of Eurasia and Africa, because our hunting technology improve. If the seeds of self-destruction has been so closely linked with the rise of advanced civilizations in other solar systems, as well as the environment, it becomes easy to understand why we have not visited any flying saucers underneath flower.           Whither Humanity?     The first indications that our ancestors were in any respect unusual among animals were our extremely crude stone tools that began to appear in Africa by around two and a half million years ago. The quantities of tools suggest that they were beginning to play a regular, significant role in our livelihood... For another million and a half years, we remained confined to Africa. Around a million years ago we did manage to spread to warm areas of Europe and Asia... Our tools progressed only at an infinitely slow rate, from extremely crude to very crude. By a hundred thousand years ago, at least the human populations of Europe and western Asia... were regularly using fire. Yet in other respects we continued to rate as just another species of big mammal. We had developed not a trace of art, agriculture, or high technology. It's unknown whether we had developed language...   Clear evidence of a Great Leap Forward in our behavior appears suddenly in Europe around forty thousand years ago, coincident with the arrival of anatomically modern Homo sapiens from Africa via the Near East. At that point, we began displaying art, technology based on specialized tools, cultural differences from place to place, and cultural innovation with time. This leap in behavior had undoubtedly been developing outside Europe, but the development must have been rapid, since the anatomically modern Homo sapiens populations living in southern Africa 100,000 years ago were still just glorified chimpanzees as judged by the debris in their cave sites. Whatever caused the leap, it must have involved only a tiny fraction of our genes, because we still differ from chimps in only 1.6 percent of our genes, and most of that difference had already developed long before our leap in behavior. The best guess I can make is that the leap was triggered by the perfection of our modern capacity for language.   Although we usually think of the Cro-Magnons as the first bearers of our noblest traits, they also bore the two traits that lie at the root of our current problems: our propensities to murder each other en masse and to destroy our environment. Even before Cro-Magnon times, fossil human skulls punctured by sharp objects and cracked to extract the brains bear witness to murder and cannibalism. The suddenness with which Neanderthals disappeared after Cro-Magnons arrived hints that genocide had now become efficient. Our efficiency at destroying our own resource base is suggested by extinctions of almost all large Australian animals following our colonization of Australia fifty thousand years ago, and of some large Eurasian and African mammals as our hunting technology improved. If the seeds of self-destruction have been so closely linked with the rise of advanced civilizations in other solar systems as well, it becomes easy to understand why we have not been visited by any flying saucers.   At the end of the last Ice Age around ten thousand years ago, the pace of our rise quickened. We occupied the Americas, coincident with a mass extinction of big mammals that we may have caused. Agriculture emerged soon thereafter. Some thousands of years later, the first written texts start to document the pace of our technical inventiveness. They also show that we were already addicted to drugs, and that genocide had become routine and admired. Habitat destruction began undermining many societies, and the first Polynesian and Malagasy settlers caused mass exterminations of species. From A.D. 1492 onward, the worldwide expansion of literate Europeans lets us trace our rise and fall in detail.   Within the last few decades we have developed the means to send radio signals to other stars, and also to blow ourselves up overnight. Even if we don't blunder into that quick end, our harnessing of much of the Earth's productivity, our exterminations of species, and our damage to our environment are accelerating at a rate that cannot be sustained for even another century. One might object that, if we look around us, we see no obvious sign that the climax of our history will come soon. In fact, the signs become obvious if one looks and then extrapolates. Starvations, pollution, and destructive technology are increasing; usable farmland, food stocks in the sea, other natural products, and environmental capacity to absorb wastes are decreasing. As more people with more power scramble for fewer resources, something has to give way.   So what is likely to happen?       — Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, Epilogue                       Indexes/15