Yuval Noah Harari has a very interesting explanation for the success of human beings over other species –
- The ability to collaborate in large numbers
- The ability to weave stories i.e. be able to exist in multiple realities –
I would like to elaborate on the second point here. Think about it – the human life span is really short. How does one advance knowledge past a single human’s time scale – say a 100 years. There are two ways to transcend time –
- Encoding core information within our genome/DNA – allows for us to pass on to our progeny that certain traits have worked well to help us survive; Individuals with unfavorable genes / characteristics perish in this race for survival and with them goes the propagation of that combination of genes. A very good treatment of this is described in Siddhartha Roy’s “The Gene”
- Secondly we pass knowledge as stories (through language – verbal, written, mathematical, algebraic etc.). This allows for a child to continue to progress collection of knowledge without having to discover Newton’s laws or Einstien’s theory of relativity and build upon these fundamental tenets.
The above in my opinion has helped humans transcend time and have an impact much larger than the finite lifespan of a single human being.
We should therefore be thankful of the folklore, family stories, history that each of us is passed on by our ancestors.