A Biography Of Humanity

History of the evolution of cultures.

The human race is a hybrid of biology and culture, and this surprising and original book gives pride of place not to genetics, but to the history of cultural evolution through an exploration of art, politics, social institutions, religions, emotions, and technology: a moving journey through mankind’s inexhaustible creative intelligence.

If we are about to enter into the transhumanist era, as many influential thinkers affirm, remembering the actions humanity has taken to resolve its difficulties and achieve its goals—surviving, fleeing pain, improving wellbeing, living together in peace, creating morality— is now an unavoidable necessity. The principle mechanisms of biological evolution are random mutations and natural selection, the same ones that intervene in the process of cultural evolution, where we meet with universal realities that every society has dealt with in its way as well as inventions common to many cultures—agriculture, writing, urban life, forms of government—and a series of delicate achievements that may collapse if the conditions that give rise to them disappear.