The World After Collapse: An Unexceptional Species

This is the fifth of a series of articles — opinionated, fanciful writings, speculations — about The World After Collapse. It draws on what I’ve learned about pre-civilization humans and other large-brained creatures, and speculates on how, after civilization’s fall is complete — probably centuries from now — the remnants of the human species might be unrecognizably different from how we behave and think now. But they may be also ‘recognizably’ similar to how we know, deep down inside, we really are, and always have been. The series is not intended to provide hope, or solace, or a prediction, or least of all a pathway to change. Just a speculation about how the world, with a smaller number of us, or without us, might look long after those of us living through the fall have gone. image by AI Unless you’ve spent a lot of time studying non-human cultures, and pre-civilization human cultures, it’s pretty hard to imagine future humans living in ways and with tools and ‘technologies’ not…