Chapter 4: The Flood

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Welcome to the Deep Dive.

Today we're plunging into, well, a really pivotal moment in the story of our species.

A chapter that, as we'll unpack, had this huge and lasting impact on the entire planet's ecology.

We've got the sources right here and our goal is to pull out those key insights.

Exactly.

Those surprising facts, the aha moment.

Right.

The things that give us a clearer picture of our past and how it echoes today.

And the material you've shared really digs into that early Homo sapiens expansion across the globe, focusing on ecological side effects, which were pretty significant.

Yeah.

So we'll be looking at the evolutionary milestones, the big social and cultural shifts.

And the core arguments in this particular account from sapiens.

We want to get beyond just what happened.

To the why.

Why it matters for understanding, well, us, our history and maybe our future too.

Precisely.

And for everyone listening, we know you want that deep knowledge, but, you know, quickly and without getting totally swamped.

So we aim to deliver that.

Let's dive in then.

Okay.

So let's set the stage before what the source calls the cognitive revolution.

What do the human world look like?

Well, prior to that turning point, the picture is very different.

Humans, and that means all human species, not just sapiens, were basically confined to the Afro -Asian landmass, that big connected area.

Okay.

But weren't there some islands people reached?

I remember reading about Flores.

Yes, exactly.

Flores is a key example.

There were a few island settlements going way back, hundreds of thousands of years even.

How did they get there?

It seems they crossed relatively short stretches of water.

We're talking distances they could likely manage by swimming or maybe using very, very simple rafts.

Nothing sophisticated.

So no epic ocean voyages at this point?

Not at all.

The open sea was a serious barrier and that meant huge parts of the planet, what the chapter calls the outer world.

Like the Americas.

Australia.

Exactly.

America, Australia, remote islands like Madagascar, New Zealand, Hawaii.

They were completely unreachable for humans.

And that wasn't just a barrier for people, was it?

It shaped the whole planet's biology.

Absolutely.

That sea barrier didn't just keep humans out.

It kept most Afro -Asian animals and plants out too.

So you get these ecosystems, like in Australia or Madagascar, evolving in complete isolation for millions of years.

Developing totally unique life forms.

Totally unique flora and fauna.

Very different from what you'd find in Africa or Asia.

Earth was sort of divided into these separate biological kingdoms.

Which really sets the scene for a massive shakeup when sapiens do figure out how to cross that barrier.

It's a hugely dramatic shift because after the cognitive revolution, something fundamental changes in sapiens.

What kind of change?

Well, The Source argues they developed the necessary technology, sure, but also the organizational skills and maybe even a new kind of vision or ambition.

The drive to go further.

Yes, the drive and the means to venture into this outer world.

And the first really big step in that expansion described here is Australia, around 45 ,000 years ago.

That's the one.

And it was a monumental undertaking.

Honestly, experts still debate exactly how they pulled it off.

Because it wasn't just hopping across a channel.

No way.

Reaching Australia meant crossing significant stretches of open ocean.

Some channels were over 100 kilometers wide.

And then once they landed, they had to adapt like instantly to a completely new environment.

An ecosystem unlike anything they knew.

So how did they manage it?

What's the main idea presented in The Source?

The most likely explanation centers on the sapiens populations living in Indonesia archipelago at the time.

Okay, that chain of islands between Asia and Australia.

Right.

Geographically, it's sort of a stepping stone.

The theory is that around 45 ,000 years ago, these groups developed the first real seafaring societies.

What does real seafaring mean in this context?

It means learning to build and navigate proper ocean going vessels, not just rafts, but boats capable of planned voyages.

They became skilled long distance fishermen, traders, explorers.

That feels like a massive cognitive and technological leap, doesn't it?

From land mammals to ocean navigators.

It's unprecedented really.

Think about other mammals that went marine seals, dolphins, whales.

Right.

They evolved over millions of years.

Exactly.

Eons of biological evolution,

specialized bodies, fins, blowholes,

sapiens in Indonesia.

There were maybe a few generations removed from savanna apes.

But they managed it through pure ingenuity and cultural innovation.

They became Pacific seafarers without needing biological changes.

It's pretty incredible.

But you mentioned we don't have like fossilized boats from back then.

Yeah, that's the tricky part for archaeologists.

Direct evidence is scarce.

Why is that rising sea levels?

Over the last 45 ,000 years, the oceans have come up maybe a hundred meters or so.

So the coastlines they lived on are deep underwater now.

Precisely.

Any ancient settlements, boat building sites, discarded rafts, they're likely buried far offshore.

So we rely on other clues.

Circumstantial evidence.

Mostly, yes, but it's strong circumstantial evidence.

Look at what happened after they reached Australia.

In the thousands of years that followed, sapiens colonized a whole bunch of smaller, even more isolated islands north of Australia.

Like where?

Islands like Bukka and Manus.

These were separated from the nearest land by, get this, 200 kilometers of open water.

200 kilometers.

You don't just accidentally drift that far and start a colony.

Highly unlikely.

Reaching places like that strongly implies they had sophisticated boats and genuine sailing skills.

They knew what they were doing.

That makes sense.

Plus there's solid archaeological evidence of regular sea trade between some closer islands like New Ireland and New Britain much later, but building on these capabilities.

Okay.

So the picture is one of developing maritime skill.

Definitely.

So arriving in Australia wasn't just finding new land.

The chapter frames it as a historical event on the scale of Columbus reaching America or the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Exactly.

It was the first time any human had ever left the interconnected Afro -Asian ecological system.

And the first large land mammal ever to make it from Afro -Asia to Australia.

That's right.

A huge biological boundary was crossed.

And the impact.

The consequences of this arrival were pretty immediate for Australia itself.

Immediate and profound.

The second that hunter -gatherers set foot on an Australian beach.

Homo sapiens effectively jumped to the top of the food chain.

Became the apex predator on an entire continent instantly.

Instantly.

Which was a new role really.

In Afro -Asia humans were part of the system.

Dangerous sure, but not utterly dominant everywhere from day one.

Right.

The text points out that before this humans had adapted to different places but hadn't radically transformed them on a massive scale.

They fitted in more or moved into new habitats.

Adjusted.

But didn't fundamentally rewrite the rules of the ecosystem.

But Australia was different.

Australia was different.

The settlers or maybe the text term conquerors is more apt here.

Didn't just adapt.

They triggered a transformation of the Australian ecosystem that made it almost unrecognizable.

And this started pretty much right away.

The first footprint might wash away but as they moved inland they left a much more permanent mark.

What did they find there?

This isolated world.

An astonishing world.

A world of mega fauna.

Totally unlike anything in Africa or Asia.

Imagine seeing 200 kilogram kangaroos.

Twice the size of modern ones.

Easily.

And marsupial lions the size of tigers.

The cotton's top predator back then.

Oversized koalas.

Giant flightless birds.

Much bigger than ostriches.

Huge lizards and snakes.

Up to five meters long.

Good roof.

And the famous giant deprotodon.

Basically a two and a half ton wombat.

A two and a half ton wombat.

And most of them apart from the birds and reptiles were marsupials.

Completely different reproductive strategies than the placental mammals sapiens knew.

It sounds like well like something out of a fantasy novel.

But tragically this unique world didn't last long after humans arrived.

No.

Within just a few thousand years which is incredibly fast in evolutionary terms almost all of these giants were gone.

How many?

The figures in the source are stark.

Of 24 Australian animal species weighing 50 kilograms or more 23 went extinct.

23 out of 24.

And many smaller species vanished too.

The entire ecological structure the food chains were fundamentally broken and rearranged.

It was the biggest ecological shakeup Australia had seen in millions of years.

And the big question hanging over it all.

Was it us?

Was homo sapiens responsible for this mass extinction?

The chapter tackles this head on right?

Because the alternative explanation often brought up is climate change.

Yes climate change is the usual suspect invoked to maybe let our ancestors off the hook.

But the evidence presented argues pretty strongly against climate being the only factor or even the main one.

It does.

There are several counter arguments laid out first.

Go on.

Okay first while the climate did change around 45 ,000 years ago in Australia the analysis suggests it wasn't some unprecedented catastrophic event.

Not extreme enough to wipe out nearly everything big.

Probably not on its own.

Climate is always fluctuating.

The key thing is the timing.

This massive die -off happens exactly when humans arrive.

Seems like too much of a coincidence.

Especially when you consider something like the diprotodon.

This giant wombat had already survived numerous ice ages and climate swings before humans showed up.

Including earlier cold peaks.

Yes like the one around 70 ,000 years ago it survived that.

But 45 ,000 years ago shortly after sapiens land it vanishes along with 90 % of the other megafauna.

The timing is just highly suspicious.

Okay that's point one.

What's the second argument against the climate only theory?

The second point relates to the oceans.

Generally major climate driven extinctions hit marine life pretty hard too right?

That makes sense yeah.

Climate affects sea temperatures currents.

Exactly.

But around 45 ,000 years ago there's no evidence of a comparable mass extinction of marine creatures around Australia.

So the land animals died off but the sea creatures were mostly okay.

Largely yes.

And that discrepancy makes perfect sense if the main new factor was a terrestrial threat.

Namely humans hunting on land.

Even with improving seafaring skills their main impact zone was terrestrial.

Okay I see.

Terrestrial hunters impact terrestrial megafauna.

What's the third piece of evidence?

The third and maybe the most powerful argument is the pattern.

What happened in Australia wasn't unique.

Meaning?

Meaning we see similar megafauna extinctions happening again and again in other parts of the outer world.

Almost always correlating tightly with the arrival of homo sapiens.

And in those later cases the human link is clearer.

Much clearer making it harder to blame climate alone.

Take New Zealand.

Its unique birds and other fauna had survived that 45 ,000 year ago climate shift just fine.

Right.

But when the Maori the first sapien settlers arrived around 800 years ago boom.

Within just a couple of centuries most of the local megafauna were gone.

60 % of all bird species extinct.

Wow that's fast and devastating.

Or look at the woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island way up in the Arctic.

Yeah.

Mammoths vanished from the continents as humans spread.

But this isolated population on Wrangel survived for thousands of years longer.

Until?

Until about 4 ,000 years ago.

Guess what happened right around then?

Humans arrived on Wrangel Island.

Exactly and the mammoths disappeared very shortly after.

So this repeating pattern humans arrive.

Megafauna disappear across different times different places different climates.

It makes it really hard to see the Australian event as just a climate related anomaly.

The source basically includes that homo sapiens acts like an ecological serial killer.

That's a sobering phrase.

It is.

Yeah.

But it leads to the next question.

How?

How could Stone Age people with relatively simple tools cause such ecological havoc?

Right.

It seems counterintuitive.

We think of the ecological disaster as needing industrial technology.

But the chapter lays out three key factors that combined could explain it even with Stone Age tech.

First is the biology of the victims.

The Yes.

Big animals tend to reproduce very slowly.

Long pregnancies.

Few offspring at a time.

Right.

Long gaps between births.

This makes their populations very vulnerable.

How so?

Even a low level of sustained hunting pressure from humans can tip the balance.

If humans killed, say, just one protodon every few months.

Over thousands of years.

That adds up.

Deaths start consistently outnumbering births and the population gradually spirals down towards extinction.

It doesn't require mass slaughter.

Just persistent pressure.

Okay.

Slow breeding rates.

What's the second factor?

The second factor was likely the sheer naivety of the Australian animals.

Naivety.

Meaning they weren't scared of humans.

Exactly.

Remember, human species had been evolving and hunting in Afro Asia for maybe two million years.

The animals there co -evolved.

They learned to be wary of these dangerous, upright apes.

They developed an instinct for fear.

Right.

But the Australian megafauna.

They'd never encountered anything like a human hunter before.

They had no instinctive fear of these relatively small, two -legged creatures.

So a giant diprotodon might just stand there looking at the first human it saw.

The text suggests exactly that.

It might just glance, think that's weird, and go back to munching leaves.

They hadn't evolved the crucial fear response needed to survive this new predator.

That's quite trashing, actually.

Okay.

Slow reproduction.

Naivety.

What's the third part of the explanation?

Fire.

Specifically, the use of fire agriculture or maybe fire stick farming.

Humans using fire to reshape the landscape.

Precisely.

The idea is that sapiens, likely already masters of fire control by this time, deliberately burned large areas of scrub and forest.

Why would they do that?

To create open grasslands.

These grasslands would attract the kinds of animals they preferred to hunt, making hunting easier.

And it might encourage useful plants to grow.

So landscape engineering with fire.

On a massive scale.

And this would have drastically altered the habitats and food sources for the native animals over huge areas.

Is there evidence for this burning?

Yes.

The fossil plant record shows a significant shift.

Before humans, eucalyptus trees weren't dominant everywhere.

Ah, but they're very fire resistant.

Exactly.

After sapiens arrive, there's a huge surge in eucalyptus pollen in the fossil record.

They spread rapidly as other types of trees and animals adapted to the old forests or scrublands would lose their food and shelter.

Some specialists like koalas who eat eucalyptus might actually do okay or even thrive.

But many others would suffer.

Many others would suffer, dwindle, and eventually go extinct.

Their world literally changed around them.

So it's a combination.

Hunting pressure on slow breeding, naive animals, plus massive habitat change driven by fire.

That seems to be the most likely scenario presented.

And there's a final nuance mentioned.

Which is?

That climate change might still have played a role, but not as the primary cause.

More like a contributing factor.

Yes.

The idea is the climate shifts around 45 ,000 years ago might have stressed the ecosystem, made it vulnerable.

Weakened its resilience.

Right.

And then humans arrive, bringing hunting and fire.

And that combination becomes the knockout blow for populations already under stress.

The system couldn't cope with all pressures at once.

Okay, that paints a complex but convincing picture for Australia.

And the chapter suggests this wasn't the end of the story.

America was next.

Indeed.

If Australia was the first major ecological blow landed by sapiens.

America was an even bigger one.

According to the source, yes.

An even larger ecological disaster followed the arrival of homo sapiens in the Americas.

And notably, sapiens was the first and only human species ever to reach the Western Hemisphere.

When did they arrive?

The estimate is around 16 ,000 years ago, which is about 14 ,000 BC.

And they came over land.

Via the Bering Land Bridge.

Yes.

Sea levels were lower then, connecting Siberia and Alaska.

But getting there was an incredible feat in itself.

Why?

What did they have to overcome?

First, they had to conquer the extreme arctic conditions of northern Siberia.

We're talking a land of permanent winter darkness and temperatures hitting minus 50 Celsius.

Minus 50.

How did they even survive that?

No previous humans managed it, right?

Not even Neanderthals.

Correct.

Even the cold adapted Neanderthals didn't push that far north.

Sapiens managed it through sheer ingenuity.

Like what?

What innovations?

The text highlights things like inventing snowshoes for travel on deep snow.

And crucial, developing really effective thermal clothing.

Layered furs.

Yes, layers of furs and skins sewn together tightly using newly invented needles.

This created clothing far warmer than anything before.

And hunting techniques.

Absolutely.

New weapons, sophisticated group hunting strategies specifically for taking down the huge game of the north mammoths, reindeer, wooly rhinos.

Sites like Sungar in Russia show these weren't just scraping by.

They were thriving mammoth hunters.

But why go so far north into such a harsh place?

What was the pull?

It was likely a mix of pushes and pulls.

Maybe conflict or population pressure pushed some groups north.

Or maybe they were following the food.

That's a major factor.

The Arctic tundra, despite the cold, teamed with huge herds of mammoth, reindeer.

Incredible sources of meat, fat for energy, warm fur, and valuable ivory for tools and art.

So chasing the herds led them eastward.

It seemed so.

Following the game, likely mammoth, some bands eventually moved across the land bridge into Alaska, probably around 14 ,000 BC.

Without realizing they had entered a whole new world.

Probably not.

To them and to the mammoths, Alaska was just more Siberia, an extension of their hunting grounds.

But they didn't immediately spread south.

No, initially huge ice sheets block the way south into the rest of North America.

Ah, the Ice Age glaciers.

Right.

But then around 12 ,000 BC, the climate warmed, the glaciers melted back, and an ice -free corridor opened up between the ice sheets.

And sapiens poured through it.

Exactly.

It triggered a rapid massive migration wave southward.

And the speed of this spread was incredible, wasn't it?

Astonishingly fast.

The chapter calls it a human blitzkrieg.

Within maybe one or two thousand years, sapiens had spread all the way down to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.

Wow.

And adapted to everything in between.

Everything.

Eastern forests, Mississippi swamps, Mexican deserts, Central American jungles, the Amazon, the high Andes, the Argentinian Pampas.

All colonized by descendants of those first Siberian migrants in just a couple of millennia.

Yes.

By around 10 ,000 BC, humans were present almost everywhere in the Americas.

It's an unparalleled demonstration of adaptability.

No other animal spread so far, so fast, into so many different environments.

Not even close.

And using essentially the same basic genetic toolkit they arrived with, it was cultural adaptation, not biological evolution, driving it.

But like in Australia, this incredible success story had a dark side for the native wildlife.

A very dark side.

This rapid settlement left behind a trail of victims, a huge extinction event.

Because the Americas 14 ,000 years ago were

different, richer in large animals.

Far richer than today.

The first Americans walked into a land teeming with megafauna.

We're talking mammoths and mastodons, of course.

But other things too.

Oh yes, rodents the size of bears,

native horses and camels, which actually evolved in America before spreading elsewhere and then dying out in their homeland.

Really?

Horses and camels were American originally.

Yep.

Also oversized lions, much bigger than African lions today.

The iconic saber -toothed cats.

Smilodon.

That's the one.

And maybe strangest of all, giant ground sloths, some weighing up to eight tons and standing six meters tall.

Eight tons?

That's bigger than an elephant.

Much bigger than modern elephants.

And South America had an even more bizarre collection of unique large mammals, giant reptiles, huge birds.

The Americas were like another isolated evolutionary laboratory.

Until sapiens arrived.

Until sapiens arrived.

And just like in Australia, within about 2 ,000 years of that arrival, most of these unique, spectacular creatures were gone.

What were the losses like statistically?

The numbers are staggering.

North America lost about 34 out of its 47 genera of large mammals.

South America lost even more.

50 out of 60 genera.

So the vast majority of large animal types just vanished.

Vanished.

Saber -tooths, ground sloths, native horses, native camels, giant rodents, mammoths, mastodons, all gone along with countless smaller species that depend on them, like presumably mammoth parasites.

And again, the timing is key evidence.

Crucial.

Paleontologists and archaeologists have dated fossil bones and fascinatingly even fossilized dung called coprolites.

Fossil poo.

Basically, yes.

And the latest dates for all these extinct megafauna consistently fall in that window shortly after humans arrive, mostly between about 12 ,000 and 9 ,000 BC for the mainland.

But didn't some survive later on islands?

Ah, yes.

That's a key piece of evidence mentioned.

The dung of ground sloths, for example, has been found on Caribbean islands like Cuba and Hispaniola, dating to as recently as 5 ,000 BC.

And when did humans first reach those islands?

Right around 5 ,000 BC.

So the sloths survived on the islands until humans got there, mirroring the Wrangell island mammoths.

Exactly.

It makes the case against climate being the sole culprit very strong, as the chapter puts it, quite bluntly.

What does it say?

In America, the dungball cannot be dodged.

We are the culprits.

So even if climate change played some role, human impact was the decisive factor in the American extinctions too.

Oh, but that's the strong conclusion presented.

Okay.

So we have Australia,

then America, these massive extinction events coinciding with the first wave of sapiens colonization.

Correct.

And if you add these two together, plus the probable extinction of other human species like Neanderthals, plus extinctions on smaller islands during this early period.

It adds up to a huge global impact, long before cities are farming.

Exactly.

The source argues this first wave of sapiens expansion ranks as one of the biggest, fastest ecological disasters in the history of life on earth.

Particularly hitting the big animals.

Especially the large, often furry terrestrial mammals.

The estimate giving is that around the time of the cognitive revolution, the planet had maybe 200 genera of land mammals, over 50 kilograms.

By the time the agricultural revolution kicked off, maybe 10 ,000 years ago, only about 100 of those genera were left.

So sapiens drove roughly half of the world's large land mammals to extinction before we even invented farming, writing, or metal tools.

That's the staggering implication.

And this pattern didn't stop there, did it?

Yeah.

The chapter talks about later ways.

No, it didn't stop.

This ecological tragedy, as the text calls it, was replayed, maybe in miniature, but just as devastating locally, countless times after the agricultural revolution.

As farmers spread out.

As farmers spread to islands that foragers hadn't reached or heavily impacted.

The archaeological record shows the same grim pattern over and over.

What's the pattern?

Scene one.

An island with a rich, unique fauna, often evolved in isolation for ages, no humans present.

Right.

Scene two.

Evidence of sapiens arrival.

Human bones, tools, maybe pottery from farmers.

And scene three.

Scene three.

Humans are established, maybe thriving, but most of the large native animals, and often many smaller ones, are gone.

Extinct.

Can you give some examples of this second wave on islands?

Madagascar is a classic case.

Isolated for millions of years, it had incredible creatures.

The elephant bird Apiornis, the largest bird known to have lived.

Huge.

And giant lemurs, some as big as gorillas, the largest primates ever found besides apes.

What happened to them?

They all vanished around 1500 years ago, which is precisely when the first archaeological evidence of humans appears on Madagascar.

Another coincidence.

Seems unlikely to be mere coincidence.

Then there's the Pacific.

A huge wave of extinctions followed the voyages of the Polynesian farmers.

When was this?

Starting around 1500 BC, they spread from places like the Solomon Islands and Fiji eastward across the vast Pacific.

To all those famous islands.

Yeah, reaching Samoa, Tonga, the Marquesas, eventually Easter Island, Hawaii, the Cook Islands, and finally New Zealand around AD 1200.

And everywhere they landed, extinctions followed.

Almost invariably.

Hundreds of unique bird species, large reptiles, other animals disappeared across the Pacific islands in their wake.

And it wasn't just the Pacific.

No, similar stories unfolded on islands in the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the Arctic, even the Mediterranean Sea.

Wherever humans arrived, biodiversity tended to plummet, especially among larger or flightless species.

The chapter mentions the Galapagos as an exception.

Yes, extremely remote islands like the Galapagos remained untouched by humans until much, much later, the 19th century in that case.

And that's why the animals there were famously unafraid of humans.

Exactly.

Like the ancient diprotodons in Australia, they hadn't evolved the fear response because they'd never needed it before Darwin and others arrived.

So the book draws a line between these ways.

Yes, it distinguishes the first wave extinction driven by foragers spreading after the cognitive revolution from the second wave extinction, driven by farmers spreading after the agricultural revolution.

And both happen long before the modern era.

Long before.

And together, they paint a very different picture of our ancestors than the common idea of them living in perfect harmony with nature.

It challenges that

deeply.

The text argues that long before the industrial revolution, homo sapiens had already achieved the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the history of biology.

Wow.

And understanding this long history, these first two waves, has implications for today, for the third wave.

The author argues it should.

Knowing about the scale of the first and second waves might make us less, well, less nonchalant about the third extinction that's happening right now, driven by industrial activity and population growth.

The idea being, if we realize how much we've already lost, we might be more motivated to protect what's left, especially the text notes, the large animals of the oceans.

Why them specifically?

Because whales, sharks, tuna, large seals, and so on were relatively spared by the first two waves, which were mainly terrestrial or coastal foragers and early farmers couldn't easily hunt them to in the deep ocean.

But now they can.

But now, industrial fishing, pollution, habitat destruction, they are hitting the large marine animals incredibly hard.

So the warning is that they could follow the mammoths and ground sloths.

That's the stark warning.

If current trends continue, the great creatures of the sea could vanish, just like the great creakies of the land did before them.

Leaving a future world populated only by humans and our domesticated animals.

The chapter uses the metaphor of Noah's Ark, but filled only with humans and the galley slaves of our livestock.

A profoundly impoverished planet in terms of large animal life.

That's a really bleak image.

Okay, so wrapping up our deep dive into this chapter,

what's the core message we should take away?

I think the main takeaway is this revelation of a very long, very significant history of human impact on global ecosystems.

It started far earlier than we often imagine.

It wasn't just about technology later on.

It was about sapiens' unique abilities and behaviors right from the start.

Exactly.

The speed, the scale of those early extinctions,

the likely causes, hunting, fire, animal naivety, and that repeating pattern across continents and islands.

It's a fundamental part of the sapien story.

Yeah, the aha moments for me were definitely the sheer scale of the first wave.

Realizing Stone Age people could do that.

Seeing how that pattern just kept repeating, it really changes how you view human history and our relationship with nature.

It forces a re -evaluation, and it leaves us with some pretty profound questions for today, doesn't it?

Like what?

Well, given this long history, this track record,

what does it tell us about us?

About our species tendencies?

And more importantly, what choices do we need to make now to avoid writing a similar final chapter for the great creatures still sharing the planet with us?

Powerful questions indeed.

Something to really reflect on.

Thank you for exploring this with me.

Thank you.

It's certainly a chapter that provides a lot of food for thought.

It definitely does.

Thanks everyone for joining us on the Deep Dive.

We hope this look back at our deep past informs how we think about our present and future.