A History of Humanity: The Evolution of the Human System. By Patrick Manning (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2020) 363 pp. $79.99 cloth $24.99 paper

Abstract

In A History of Humanity, Manning argues that human energies and activities created our world, and that the influence of nature is receding. Our achievements have created a “human system” that reproduces and transforms itself both locally and globally. The natural world is becoming marginalized, but it is not yet tamed, as greenhouse gasses rise, presaging disaster for humanity. Manning traces four agencies of change in human history—biological, cultural, and social evolution (the three most commonly discussed) and Gaia, the system of life on earth as part of the natural environment. The human system started as an insignificant factor in Gaia but has grown to become the greatest influence of all. Manning calls human history an exercise in the exploitation of Gaia’s natural resources by individuals and groups grappling with ways to cooperate. This study is history on a grand scale, “big history” if you like, which has become a mildly fashionable genre in recent years.The narrative that forms of the core of Manning’s synthesis comes in three parts to pose a fundamental question: What governs human behavior and how do we know? After a brief introductory essay that lays out the human system, three chapters synthesize the Pleistocene from about 3 million to 12,000 years ago. Chapter 2 focuses on biological and cultural evolution, summarizing human origins in five rapid-fire pages, followed by a survey of advances in hominin capabilities. Chapter 3 surveys speech and social evolution; speaking humans spread across the globally 70,000 years ago. In the three fast-moving chapters to follow—a huge bite of time from 65,000 to 1,000 years ago—Manning relies on a combination of imaginatively employed archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and climatological data to trace human migrations from a population of “founders” in arid Northeast Africa. He makes numerous bold statements, especially about linguistic data, that come dangerously close to being gross generalizations. Manning also espouses the putative “kelp highway” as an avenue for first settlement of the Americas, a much-criticized hypothesis.Three chapters cover the development of the increasingly complex human institutions of the Holocene evolution. The discussion ranges widely from the origins of agriculture to the roles of warfare and humanly caused climate change, relying on Ruddiman’s controversial, and by no means widely accepted, theories.1 The origins of cities, empires, and larger-scale social institutions follow, when Gaia and the human system collided, as human societies looked increasingly outward. Between 900 and 1250 c.e., warming in the Northern Hemisphere, the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, resulted in significant changes in human society. At this point, the journey runs through well-traveled historical territory, from the Black Death and pandemics to Chinggis Khan’s campaigns in Mongolia, ocean voyaging, and long-distance maritime trade.Chapter 8 surveys the rise of capitalism and a more “tightly bound” human system, starting in the seventeenth century and ending with nationhood and nationalism. Inevitably, this discussion leads to the twenty-first-century environmental and socioeconomic crises and what the human system does about them. Manning argues that this system encompasses three new networks—international popular culture, both general and specialized knowledge at a global level, and democratic discourse. He poses major questions: Should the human system continue to grow? Is social inequality inevitable in his system, and how should social institutions be regulated? The book ends with six frameworks for analysis.Global histories are always compromises, especially in an era when interdisciplinary research is routine. Given its ambitious goals and its theory of a human system, A History of Humanity is far too short. It can be described as an exhausting, superficial gallop through world history that is provocative, and often imaginative, in its conclusions.