The human population on the earth exceeded eight billion people in November 2022, underscoring our species’ status as the dominant force on our planet, with our unparalleled cognitive abilities and technological prowess, and ability to harness, engineer, and reshape the environment around us.
This dominance has also resulted in some catastrophic outcomes as we have expanded our footprint, resulting in habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change, pushing a number of species to the brink of extinction. It is hard to imagine that we as a species, just like other animals and plants, could have also been pushed to the brink of extinction at multiple points in the entire history of evolution.
Think about a scenario where the whole human species is represented by a few members only, living in a very hostile natural environment where everyday existence is at the mercy of natural forces. This small group, in addition to its extraordinary resilience and creative survival tactics, would have had the enormous responsibility of keeping the entire human species alive. It’s quite possible that our ancestors could have experienced many such species-defining moments on their path to dominating the world as we know it today.
