Quotes About Evolution

Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2–3 per cent of total body weight, but it consumes 25 per cent of the body's energy when the body is at rest. By comparison, the brains of other apes require only 8 per cent of rest-time energy.

Evolution is based on difference, not on equality. Every person carries a somewhat different genetic code, and is exposed from birth to different environmental influences.

In the twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection. Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world.

el cazador-recolector medio tenía un conocimiento más amplio, más profundo y más variado de su entorno inmediato que la mayoría de sus descendientes modernos. Hoy

When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new 'niches for imbeciles' were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the 21st century

Until the Cognitive Revolution, the doings of all human species belonged to the realm of biology, or, if you so prefer, prehistory

from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose.

La escritura nació como la criada de la conciencia humana, pero cada vez más se está convirtiendo en su dueña y señora.

Qué tipo de culturas, sociedades y estructuras políticas habrían surgido en un mundo en el que coexistían varias especies humanas diferentes?

other words, while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social structures, the nature of their interpersonal relations, their economic activities and a host of other behaviours within a decade or two.

El lenguaje escrito pudo haberse concebido como un medio modesto para describir la realidad, pero gradualmente se convirtió en un medio poderoso para remodelarla.

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution

Not only do we possess an abundance of uncivilised cousins, once upon a time we had quite a few brothers and sisters as well. We are used to thinking about ourselves as the only humans, because for the last 10,000 years, our species has indeed been the only human species around. Yet the real meaning of the word human is 'an animal belonging to the genus Homo',

Yuval Noah Harari

From the Cognitive Revolution onwards, historical narratives replace biological theories as our primary means of explaining the development of Homo sapiens

Yuval Noah Harari

Since 1789, despite numerous wars, revolutions and upheavals, humans have not managed to conceive of any new value.

Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour to rapidly changing challenges.

According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per cent believe that God created humans in their current form

Yet to understand modern economic history, you really need to understand just a single word. The word is growth. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, the modern economy has been growing like a hormone-soused teenager. It eats up everything it can find and puts on inches faster than you can count.

Once Google, Facebook and other algorithms become all-knowing oracles, they may well evolve into agents and ultimately into sovereigns

Hands Cave', in Argentina.

So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved di