Literally: What’s After Sapiens?
If you read Yuval Noah Harari's bestselling book, "Sapiens," you'll probably read things you'd never heard before in your life.
Scientists mostly agree that there have been 20 species before sapiens. TWENTY! Probably in school, you heard of Homo erectus and/or Homo neanderthalensis, but there have been almost two dozen, not just those!
They OVERLAPPED! TOGETHER! ON EARTH! This is the crazy part. Over time, it hasn't been "just one kind of human at a time, on the planet;" there have been many on the planet at once! If you Google it, you'll find: "For most of human history, the idea of being the only human species on Earth was completely foreign. Our current state of being completely alone is a very recent anomaly. Evolution is a 'bushy tree' rather than a straight line. Multiple distinct hominin species regularly crossed paths, competed for resources, and sometimes even mated."
We sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years now.
Now getting to my own thoughts…………
Some of the other "lifespans" of our ancestors were also only about 300,000 years total. (Australopithecus anamensis and Kenyanthropus platyops.)
One of our ancestors, Homo naledi, only lasted 100,000 years on Earth
So there is clear data that our sapiens lifespan of 300,000 might just be about it! (Key words: "might be," of course)
So, WTF comes next?
Wouldn't we be naive AF to think something isn't coming next??? Not to mention it would be narcissistic, which sure seems fitting for sapiens.
A big part of the evolution between species has been brain development.
If it's possible (possible, I said) that sapiens' time is coming to an end... if it's brain development that plays a big role in the emergence of future species...
Then who says what's next is not even Homo sapiens at all?
Hence, my writing: "After Sapiens."
I hypothesize that what's next is us being Gods. Creators of our own lives, through and through, with full brainpower, full sovereignty, full independence, full clarity. Gods in the clothes we call skin.
I don't know if we'll "look" any different, but we will think differently. That's where the evolution will start (or has already started, since data shows overlaps definitely exist). And from that evolutionary starting point, who the heck knows.
Eric
