What explains the rise of humans?

70,000 years ago,

our ancestors were insignificant animals.

The most important thing to know
about prehistoric humans

is that they were unimportant.

Their impact on the world
was not much greater

than that of jellyfish or fireflies
or woodpeckers.

Today, in contrast, we control
this planet.

And the question is, how did we come
from there to here?

How did we turn ourselves
from insignificant apes,

minding our own business
in a corner of Africa,

to the rulers of planet Earth?

Usually, we look for the difference
between us and all the other animals

on the individual level.

We want to believe, I want to believe,

that there is something special
about me,

about my body, about my brain

that makes me so superior
to a dog or a pig, or a chimpanzee.

But the truth is that on
the individual level,

I'm embarrassingly similar
to a chimpanzee.

And if you take me and a chimpanzee

and put us together on some lonely island

and we had to struggle for survival

to see who survives better,

I would definitely place my bets
on the chimpanzee,

not on myself.

And this is not something
wrong with me personally.

I guess if they took almost anyone of you

and placed you alone with a chimpanzee
on some island,

the chimpanzee would do much better.

The real difference between humans
and all other animals

is not on individual level,

it's on the collective level.

Humans control the planet
because they are the only animal

that can cooperate both flexibly
and in very large numbers.

Now, there are other animals,

like the social insects,
the bees, the ants,

that can cooperate in large numbers,

but they don't do so flexibly.

Their cooperation is very rigid.

There is basically just one way
in which a bee hive can function.

And if there is a new opportunity,
a new danger,

the bees cannot reinvent
the social system overnight.

They cannot, for example,
execute the queen

and establish a republic of bees

or a communist dictatorship
of worker bees.

Other animals, like the social mammals,

the wolves, the elephants,
the dolphins, the chimpanzees,

they can cooperate much more flexibly,

but they do so only in small numbers

because cooperation among chimpanzees

is based on intimate knowledge
of one of the other.

I'm a chimpanzee, and you're a chimpanzee

and I want to cooperate with you,

I need to to know you personally,

what kind of chimpanzee are you?

Are you a nice chimpanzee,

are you an evil chimpanzee,

are you trustworthy?

If I don't know you, how can I
cooperate with you?

The only animal that can combine
the two abilities together

and cooperate both flexibly
and still do so in very large numbers

is us, homo sapiens.

One versus one, or even 10 versus 10,

chimpanzees might be better than us.

But, if you pit 1,000 humans
against 1,000 chimpanzees,

the humans will win easily

for the simple reason that
a 1,000 chimpanzees

cannot cooperate at all.

And if you now try to cram
100,000 chimpanzees

into Oxhill (?) Street or
into Wembley (?) stadium,

or into Tiananmen Square
or in the Vatican,

you will get chaos, complete chaos.

Just imagine Wembley stadium
with 100,000 chimpanzees.

Complete madness.

In contrast, humans normally
gather there in tens of thousands

and what we get is not chaos, usually.

What we get is extremely sophisticated
and effective networks of cooperation.

All the achievements of humankind
throughout history,

whether it's building the pyramids
or flying to the moon,

have been based not
on individual abilities,

but on this ability to cooperate
flexibly in large numbers.

Think even about this very talk
that I'm going now:

I'm standing here in front of an audience
of about 300 or 400 people,

most of you are complete strangers to me.

Similarly, I don't really know
all the people

who have organized
and worked on this event.

I don't know the pilot and crew members
of the plane

who brought me over here, yesterday,
to London.

I don't know the people who
invented and manufactured

this microphone or these cameras
that are recording what I'm saying.

I don't know the people who
wrote all the books and aritcles

that I read in preparation for this talk.

And I certainly don't know
all the people

who might be watching this talk
over the internet

somewhere in Buenos Aires or in New Delhi.

Nevertheless, even though
we don't know each other,

we can work together
to create

this global exchange of ideas.

This is something chimpanzees
cannot do.

They communicate, of course,

but you will never catch
a chimpanzee

traveling to some distant chimpanzee band

to give them a talk about bananas
or about elephants

or about anything else that might
interest chimpanzees.

Now cooperation is not always nice,

all the horrible things humans
have been doing throughout history --

and we have been doing
some very horrible things--

those things are also based
on large-scale cooperation.

Prisons are a system of cooperation,

slaughterhouses are a system
of cooperation,

concentration camps are a system
of cooperation.

Chimpanzees don't have slaughterhouses
and prions and concentration camps.

Now suppose I've managed
to convince you that yes,

we control the world because
we cooperate flexibly

in large numbers.

The next question that immediately
arises in the mind

of an inquisitive listener is: how,
exactly, did we do it?

What enables us, alone of all the animals,

to cooperate in such a way?

The answer is our imagination.

We can cooperate flexibly,

with countless numbers of strangers,

because we alone, of all the animals
on the planet,

can create and believe fictions,
fictional stories.

And as long as everybody believes
in the same fiction,

everybody obeys and follows
the same rules,

the same norms, the name values.

All other animals use
their communication system

only to describe reality.

A chimpanzee may say,
"Look, there is a lion,

let's run away."

Or, "Look, there is a banana tree
over there.

Let's go and get bananas."

Humans, in contrast, use their language
not merely to describe reality,

but also to create new realities,
fictional realities.