Fragments
This fragment is not meant to be an anthropological or a historical factual dissertation on human evolution, but rather a quick reminder of how we got to where we are.
As I explore these ideas, I cannot really reconcile the Source’s wish to know itself with the reality we are living in. If we are indeed filaments of that original consciousness — sparks sent out to experience, create, and reflect — then what are we reflecting back? On the other hand, maybe Source made a pact with its filaments… you go out into the “world” for me and as a token of appreciation, you have FREE WILL to create and experience in my behalf anything and everything you wish.
And this is the best we did.
Human history is the record of humankind, starting from early human ancestors in Africa around 6 million years ago to modern Homo sapiens emerging roughly 300,000 years ago, moving from hunter-gatherer societies to global civilizations. Humans spread across the globe during the last Ice Age, populating nearly every continent by 12,000 years ago. About 10,000 years later, communities shifted from nomadic hunting to growing crops and domesticating animals in permanent settlements. Surpluses of food led to specialized labor, social classes, trade, writing, and the first cities in places like Mesopotamia and Egypt.
AND IT IS DOWNHILL FROM HERE!
The concepts of wealth, greed, and “us vs. them” tribalism completely restructured human biology, psychology, and civilization. They transformed humanity from an egalitarian, cooperative species into a highly stratified, global society. Here is how these forces systematically changed us.
In hunter-gatherer times, human survival relied on absolute equality. Accumulating more than others was seen as a mental illness or a threat to the tribe. Wealth and greed radically rewired human psychology. Even in times of abundance, the ability to store wealth created a perpetual fear of losing it — a scarcity mindset that pulled us out of the present moment and into a permanent anxiety about the future. Once wealth became visible through larger houses, fine clothing, or jewelry, humans began tying their self-worth to material possessions. This birthed social envy and competitive consumption. And as wealth grew, something quieter and more insidious happened — empathy contracted. Modern psychological studies consistently show that high levels of wealth and power can blunt the brain’s empathy centers. Elites found it psychologically easier to exploit the lower classes because they no longer viewed them as peers.
Before wealth accumulation, social hierarchies were fluid. A great hunter might lead today, a wise elder tomorrow. Wealth institutionalized inequality, creating permanent social structures. For the first time, a person could be powerful purely because of who their parents were, not because of their personal skills or contributions to the community. Wealth surpluses allowed for specialized professions — blacksmiths, weavers, accountants — but also separated society into “clean” intellectual and ruling work and “dirty” manual labor. In many nomadic societies, women provided the majority of daily calories through gathering, giving them high social status. As private property and land inheritance became dominant, women’s sexuality and mobility were heavily restricted by men to ensure that wealth passed down to legitimate biological heirs.
Tribalism — “us vs. them” — is deeply rooted in human evolutionary history. But combining tribalism with wealth and borders fundamentally changed the scale of human conflict. Hunter-gatherer conflicts were usually small-scale skirmishes over mating access or temporary territory. Wealth made war highly profitable. Empires went to war to capture slaves, silver mines, and fertile agricultural valleys. To justify conquering other groups for their wealth, societies weaponized “us vs. them” thinking — ideologies of racial, religious, or cultural superiority were invented to justify slavery and colonialism. And the need to protect wealth from “them” drove rapid technological innovation, pouring human ingenuity toward mass destruction.
Eventually, the drive for wealth pushed humanity to cross oceans and map the entire planet. The pursuit of resources — spices, gold, sugar, oil — forced isolated human populations to interact, trade, and integrate, but rarely as equals. And somewhere along the way, early humans who once viewed themselves as part of nature began to see it instead as a resource to be extracted. The ecological disconnection that followed has brought us to the edge of what the planet can sustain.
And here we are…