We think empires are evil, but are they? An empire is a political order. To qualify as an empire, you must rule over different peoples – each with their unique cultural identity and territory. The other requirement is to have flexible borders and an unlimited appetite. Modern day Britain has well-defined borders, but 100 years … Read more

Money lets people convert everything to almost anything they want. Money is superior to bartering because when there are many strangers, the system doesn’t work. Only a small range of products can be exchanged through a barter system, but a complex economy of goods and services cannot. Some societies tried to find a way around … Read more

The Arrow of History The novels by Charles Dickens teach us that the liberal regimes of 19th century Europe gave much importance to individual freedom, even if it meant throwing poor families in prison, and leaving orphans no choice but to join pickpocket schools. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s work shows us how Communism’s love for egalitarianism resulted … Read more

History has not been fair. People who are disadvantaged economically will have children who are likely to be disadvantaged economically. The wealthy and the educated will have offspring who are likely to be wealthy and educated. People are not born with an equal chance in the world. But today things are much better. Slavery used … Read more

Football is a sport that children seem to play quite easily, but there is no football gene that they inherited. They can only play because they learned the rules of the game and they live in a place where other children have also learned these rules. All social systems, financial and legal, are based on … Read more

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. Some argue that the agricultural revolution resulted in a period of great prosperity for human beings, a glorious turning point. Others say it was a curse. What we know for certain is that like any … Read more

The agricultural revolution started around 10,000 years ago. Wheat was the first crop to be cultivated, and in the last 2000 years, no new additional crops have been added. We may have the minds of ancient foragers, but we have the cuisine of ancient farmers. The agricultural revolution only occurred in some parts of the … Read more

There is a high chance that homo sapiens are responsible for the mass extinctions of various animal species that occurred in Australia, America, Africa, and other parts of the world. While some blame can be attributed to climate change (the earth goes through an ice age every 100,000 years on average), the human contribution to … Read more

Ancient foragers had very different lives to us now. In some ways better, in other ways, worse. They were known as the original affluent societies. They had less sickness, traveled in groups so there was no chance of epidemics. They encountered no more than 200 people in their lifetime. There was no industrial pollution or … Read more

Our ability to communicate effectively made us superior to other animals. All animals can communicate with each other, and in very sophisticated ways, but they cannot describe things in great detail, they cannot spread information about each other, and they cannot collectively believe in fictions. 1) Precision: We can describe with more detail what’s happening … Read more