The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall

by Mark W. Moffett, Sean Patrick Hopkins (Read by)

Overview

The epic story of how humans evolved from intimate chimp communities into a world-dominating species

If a chimpanzee ventures into the territory of a different group, it will almost certainly be killed. But a New Yorker can fly to Los Angeles--or Borneo--with very little fear. Psychologists have done little to explain this: for years, they have held that our biology puts a hard upper limit--about 150 people--on the size of our social groups. But human societies are in fact vastly larger. How do we manage--by and large--to get along with each other?

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. In the vein of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity--and what it will take to sustain them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781549180194
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/21/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 5.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mark W. Moffett, called "a daring eco-adventurer" by Margaret Atwood, is a biologist and research associate at the Smithsonian. He has also author four books and has been a regular guest on the Colbert Report, Conan, NPR's Fresh Air, and CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in New York City.

A student of neuroscience and speech pathology, Sean Patrick Hopkins has translated his understanding of human behavior and vocal performance into a career in storytelling. His classical training and versatility with dialects has helped to create distinct and varied characters across many genres. In addition to narrating over 100 audiobooks, he has been seen and heard on film, television, video games, and stages in New York City and across the country. When not in the booth, you can find him buried in genealogy research, out exploring our National Parks, and raising an amazing daughter alongside his wife, fellow narrator Patricia Santomasso.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Section I Affiliation and Recognition

Chapter 1 What a Society Isn't (and What It Is) 17

Chapter 2 What Vertebrates Get out of Being in a Society 29

Chapter 3 On the Move 37

Chapter 4 Individual Recognition 45

Section II Anonymous Societies

Chapter 5 Ants and Humans, Apples and Oranges 57

Chapter 6 The Ultimate Nationalists 66

Chapter 7 Anonymous Humans 79

Section III Hunter-Gatherers Until Recent Times

Chapter 8 Band Societies 97

Chapter 9 The Nomadic Life 112

Chapter 10 Settling Down 122

Section IV The Deep History of Human Anonymous Societies

Chapter 11 Pant-Hoots and Passwords 141

Section V Functioning (or Not) in Societies

Chapter 12 Sensing Others 161

Chapter 13 Stereotypes and Stories 173

Chapter 14 The Great Chain 184

Chapter 15 Grand Unions 193

Chapter 16 Putting Kin in Their Place 203

Section VI Peace and Conflict

Chapter 17 Is Conflict Necessary? 217

Chapter 18 Playing Well with Others 228

Section VII The Life and Death of Societies

Chapter 19 The Lifecycle of Societies 241

Chapter 20 The Dynamic "Us" 251

Chapter 21 Inventing Foreigners and the Death of Societies 261

Section VIII Tribes to Nations

Chapter 22 Turning a Village into a Conquering Society 275

Chapter 23 Building and Breaking a Nation 291

Section IX From Captive to Neighbor … To Global Citizen?

Chapter 24 The Rise of Ethnicities 309

Chapter 25 Divided We Stand 327

Chapter 26 The Inevitability of Societies 344

Conclusion: Identities Shift and Societies Shatter 355

Acknowledgments 363

Notes 367

References 402

Index 449

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/17/2018

Moffett (Adventures Among Ants), a visiting scholar in Harvard’s Human Evolutionary Biology department, intrigues by setting human societies in the context of those of the animal kingdom. He returns to humanity’s near kin, the chimpanzees and bonobos, again and again, but includes other surprising comparisons as well. Ants, perhaps, provide the most astonishing analogue, with one colony of Argentine ants spreading from the Mexican border north past San Francisco and with outliers in Hawaii and along nearly 2,000 miles of Europe’s coast. What sets ants and humans apart from other species is the ability to live in anonymous societies, which Moffett illustrates with his café example—a person can walk into a café full of strangers, recognize them as members of his or her own society, and feel perfectly safe. Much of this work is devoted to the need for an “other” to define societies, including some rather disheartening studies on how deeply ingrained prejudices can be. Moffett, in his final thoughts, suggests that though humanity will never be free from all divisions, “humans have some capacity to counter our inherited propensities for conflict through deliberate self-correction.” This fine work should have broad appeal to anyone curious about human societies, which is basically everyone. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

One of Forbes' Must-Read Books of 2020
One of Kirkus' Best Books of 2019

 

Recommended reading "for how we got into this mess"—Amy Tan, New York Times

"[An] uplifiting perspective...mesmerizing"—The Financial Times

"Moffett is a renowned expert on these creatures, and begins by providing mesmerising descriptions of how they create systems that rival human societies in complexity. He also explains in detail how, as different species collide, ants (like parts of the human race) are locked in permanent war beneath the soil. I will never look at an ant in the same way again."


—Financial Times

"The Human Swarm is a book of wonders . . . Moffett is a maverick"—The New Statesman

"Fascinating... a delightfully accessible and ingenious series of lessons on humans and our societies."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"[Moffett] intrigues by setting human societies in the context of those of the animal kingdom. This fine work should have broad appeal to anyone curious about human societies, which is basically everyone."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A well-researched and richly detailed account of why societies have been a fundamental part of the human experience since our earliest ancestors. Highly recommended for fans of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed and Yuval Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind."—Library Journal, starred review

"The Human Swarm is a remarkable intellectual achievement of sustained intensity, to be commended for navigating an important yet difficult area in between biology, psychology, sociology, economics, history, and philosophy. Fruitfully, it also raises many questions for future research."—Hugh Desmond, Quarterly Review of Biology

"[An] enticing whirlwind tour of the fascinating patterns of behaviour and structures of societies revealed through the varied lives of people and animals across the globe."—Nature

"Our times are filled with garage start-ups that become Silicon Valley behemoths overnight. Such scaling-up pales in comparison to humans going from hunter-gatherer bands to our globalized world in the blink of an evolutionary eye — and thus now, a stranger a continent away can be killed when we press a button operating a drone, or rescued when we press a button marked 'Donate now.' In The Human Swarm, Mark Moffett charts the science of this scaling up of human societies, and its unlikely evolutionary consequences. This highly readable book is ambitious in its interdisciplinary breadth, rigorous in its science, and deeply thought-provoking in its implications."—Robert Sapolsky, author of Behave

"The Human Swarm is surely the most accurate, most comprehensive, most original explanation of our social existence that we're ever likely to see, one jaw-dropping revelation after another, most of them astonishing, all of them fascinating. It's true without question, which seems obvious as you're reading, and it's very well written — a joy to read."—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Harmless People

"A tour-de-force."—Donald Johanson, discoverer of the famous missing-link fossil "Lucy" and founder of the Institute of Human Origins

"Extraordinary! It's amazing to follow Mark Moffett's thoughts and knowledge and take a mental trips that go within a span of seconds from ants to Michael Corleone."—Isabella Rossellini, actress

"The Human Swarm is a book by a biologist that should fascinate any thoughtful reader and deserves to be taken seriously by psychologists and social scientists alike."—Roy Baumeister, author of Willpower

"A truer statement hasn't been uttered: 'Our groupiness shapes human history.' Moffett's book is a wide-ranging, deeply interesting analysis of how large numbers of individual agents become a society. His travels in the world and through vast intellectual landscapes give him a unique view of why we are the way we are, both in our similarity to other living beings and our differences from them — our ability to include once alien groups into our own, for example. There is no other book I've read recently that made my neurons pop at the rate this book did."—Mahzarin Banaji, author of Blindspot

"This is a book of amazing ideas, many of them counterintuitive. Mark Moffett's astounding stories of animal societies persuaded me that the future of human cities have been foretold by the ants. Read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed."—Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine and author of The Inevitable

"In the past quarter century, there has emerged a genre of Big History that includes such epic books as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. Mark Moffett's The Human Swarm is destined to be included in future lists of such books that not only add to our understanding of who we are, how we got here, and where we're going, but change our perspective of how we fit in the larger picture of life on Earth. A magisterial work of monumental importance."—Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Moral Arc

"Homo sapiens is a small-group social animal that physically seems to be limited to personal relationships with a few individuals. Nonetheless humanity is struggling to deal with societies of billions as human technologies now pose existential threats tied to those numbers. In The Human Swarm, Mark Moffett presents an intriguing overview of the biological roots and cultural evolution of this now-critical situation."—Paul R. Ehrlich, author of Human Natures

"Deeply researched (he references more than a thousand books and journals in the endnotes) and often humorous, TheHuman Swarmis a multidisciplinary tour-de-force . . . Moffett explores a wide intellectual canvas to make sense of the societies of different animal species, human ancestors, and people today."—The Sun

"Read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed."—Kevin Kelly, founder of The Inevitable



"The Human Swarm should fascinate any thoughtful reader and deserves to be taken seriously by psychologists and social scientists alike—Roy Baumeister, author of Willpower

From the Publisher

Sean Patrick Hopkins gives an unassuming, direct performance of Moffett's exhaustive audiobook about the nature of human behavior in groups and how we contrast to other species. Moffett is a Harvard scholar and Smithsonian researcher. Listeners unfamiliar with the group behaviors of monkeys, lions, and insects will find his work enlightening. Humans have managed to survive and flourish because of our general acceptance of each other. For example, our ability to enter a coffee shop and join the group there without conflict is an indicator of how we've survived while other species struggle. Hopkins's narrative tone is approachable and enjoyable. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

Sean Patrick Hopkins gives an unassuming, direct performance of Moffett's exhaustive audiobook about the nature of human behavior in groups and how we contrast to other species. Moffett is a Harvard scholar and Smithsonian researcher. Listeners unfamiliar with the group behaviors of monkeys, lions, and insects will find his work enlightening. Humans have managed to survive and flourish because of our general acceptance of each other. For example, our ability to enter a coffee shop and join the group there without conflict is an indicator of how we've survived while other species struggle. Hopkins's narrative tone is approachable and enjoyable. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2019 - AudioFile

★ 2019-02-03

Scientists routinely explain that humans rule the planet because of our intelligence, tools, or language, but this eye-opening account will convince most readers that our biggest asset is our ability to be comfortable around strangers.

A research associate at the Smithsonian and a visiting scholar at Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Moffett (Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions, 2010, etc.) points out that humans will walk into a cafe or stadium full of unfamiliar people without thinking twice. A chimpanzee, wolf, lion, or mouse encountering strangers could be attacked and perhaps killed. This ability—not IQ—has allowed humans to swarm over the world, argues the author. We belong to a society Moffett defines as "a discrete group of individuals amounting to more than a simple family…whose shared identity sets them apart from other such groups and is sustained continuously across the generations." Most animal colonies, flocks, herds, schools, packs, swarms, or prides are simply creatures getting together informally, but a small minority qualify as societies because members recognize who belongs and who doesn't. These provide access to resources and protection; however, despite the popular belief, cooperation is optional among higher animals. Lions do not necessarily hunt as a team, and a chimpanzee feels no obligation to share food. The author leaves no doubt that ants form the only society rivaling that of humans, featuring mutual cooperation, division of labor, and self-sacrifice. Much of the book is a fascinating exploration of how members of human societies identify who belongs and why most believe that their society is superior. Flags, food, hairstyle, dress, and heroic founding myths (their truth is irrelevant) all play significant roles, and infants absorb the prejudices of the adults around them as effortlessly as they do language.

A delightfully accessible and ingenious series of lessons on humans and our societies.

Kirkus Reviews