The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of 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. Surpassing 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.
1127922348
The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall
The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of 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. Surpassing 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.
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The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall

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

by Mark W. Moffett

Narrated by Sean Patrick Hopkins

Unabridged — 15 hours, 26 minutes

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

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

by Mark W. Moffett

Narrated by Sean Patrick Hopkins

Unabridged — 15 hours, 26 minutes

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Overview

The epic story and ultimate big history of how human society evolved from intimate chimp communities into the sprawling civilizations of 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. Surpassing 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.

Editorial Reviews

The New Statesman

The Human Swarm is a book of wonders . . . Moffett is a maverick

New Statesman

"The Human Swarm is a book of wonders.”

The Financial Times

[An] uplifiting perspective...mesmerizing

author of Behave Robert Sapolsky

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.

founder of Wired Magazine and author of The Inevit Kevin Kelly

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.

New York Times Amy Tan

Recommended reading "for how we got into this mess

From the Publisher

One of Forbes' Must-Read Books of 2020

publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Mo Michael Shermer

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.

author of Willpower Roy Baumeister

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.

actress Isabella Rossellini

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.

The Sun

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.

founder of The Inevitable Kevin Kelly

Read this manifesto if you like to have your mind changed.

discoverer of the famous missing-link fossil "Lucy Donald Johanson

A tour-de-force.

Financial Times (London)

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

author of Blindspot Mahzarin Banaji

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.

author of The Harmless People Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

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.

Nature

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

author of Human Natures Paul R. Ehrlich

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.

Kirkus Reviews

★ 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.


Product Details

BN ID: 2940173778338
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Publication date: 04/16/2019
Edition description: Unabridged
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