The Powerful Primate: How Controlling Energy Enabled Us to Build Civilization

From the evolution of the opposable thumb to the exploitation of fossil fuels, each stage of human development has been driven by an engineering advancement that involves “converting energy from one form into another,” according to this cerebral study. Biologist Ennos (The Age of Wood) begins with humanity’s antecedents, tree-dwelling primates who developed bodies that happened to be ideal for creating simple tools. Over time, early humans modified these tools to convert more energy with them, such as using “sling action” to turn stone blades into powerful projectiles. Meanwhile mastery over fire supplemented the power-generating potential of early humans’ metabolisms, allowing them to “divert more energy to.... supporting a larger brain,” and leading, over the ensuing millennia, to more and more energy-intensive technologies, from fired earthenware ceramics to the smelting of metals. In the early modern era, the discovery that coal contained “five times as much energy per unit as wood” facilitated the buildup of the “energy intense industries” that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Today, “profligate” use of energy threatens humanity’s existence, Ennos notes, even it has “doomed us to be the slaves of machines” and “forced us to mimic them, carrying out repetitive but unskilled tasks.” The result is a striking call to reconsider whether humanity controls energy or it controls humanity. (Feb.)