Homo Dominus

Book excerpt: Homo dominus redefines what it means to be human. Starting with the component pieces of human uniqueness-cognition, self-awareness, language, technology, aggression, altruism, culture, the arts, and spirituality-it rebuilds the human species using a new conceptual blueprint. Sure to spark debate, Homo dominus offers a new vision of who we are and how we got here. Author Stephen Dennis draws from neuroscience, paleontology, psychology, and sociobiology to show that the impetus of human evolution is our propensity to control events and their consequences. This means simply that our root operating system is built on actions taken to bring perceptions into line with expectations. A pivotal genetic shift driven by ecological instability in the late Miocene era triggered this evolutionary divergence and propelled us out of apedom. From our hardscrabble origins on the forest margins to our current position of global dominance, Homo dominus recasts traditional human evolutionary theory in terms of basic control theory. It is a powerful organizing principle that puts our past in a new context and projects our future in a new light.