Humanity in a Thousand Years: Evolution, Empathy and Our Future

In a photograph of excavations in Morocco, people crouch beside a low section of exposed ground. Buckets, tools and bags for finds sit nearby. It looks like work that requires patience and an uncomfortable posture. Yet this earth held the remains of people who lived roughly three hundred thousand years ago. They did not know that someone would eventually call them early Homo sapiens, measure their bones and try to reconstruct their faces. They had their own day to get through. MPI EVA.

There is something unsettling about looking at that photograph. We tend to place ourselves at the end of history: here are the ancient people, here are their tools, and here we are examining them. Yet several thousand years from now, if humanity has that continuation, someone may study our apartments, phones and the remains of our cities in much the same way. Alongside them will be records of how we treated children, built complex machines and helped strangers while also attacking our neighbours, torturing, subjugating and destroying.

How will we appear to that person? Developed enough to understand the consequences of our actions, but not sufficiently able to stop? Or a generation that gradually learned how to handle its capabilities? We cannot answer yet. We can imagine the future, but living and making decisions happen now.

There is a small trap in this question: who exactly do we mean by human? The history of our species, Homo sapiens, reaches back about three hundred thousand years, while the evolutionary changes preceding its emergence span millions. Humans and living chimpanzees shared an ancestor roughly six to eight million years ago. Different evolutionary lineages diverged from that ancestor. The chimpanzees we can see today were not our ancestors. Smithsonian.

The familiar picture of figures progressively straightening up and becoming a modern man therefore oversimplifies the story. It resembles a queue in which each arrival is supposedly better than the last. In reality, different human species and populations existed, some at the same time. Some lineages disappeared, others left descendants, and some interbred. All living humans belong to one species despite our considerable diversity of appearance. Smithsonian, Smithsonian.

Homo sapiens emerged into a world that already had a long human history. Homo habilis lived approximately 2.4–1.4 million years ago. Homo erectus is known from finds ranging from around 1.9 million to 110,000 years old; its body proportions were already closer to ours, and it spread beyond Africa. The Neanderthal lineage developed long before the last Neanderthals disappeared around forty thousand years ago. These dates overlap, so they should not be arranged as a sequence in which one species simply replaced another. University of Zurich, Smithsonian, Smithsonian.

Jebel Irhoud matters precisely because it reveals the complexity of this process. The faces of the early Homo sapiens found there already had many features familiar to us, while the shape of the braincase differed. Our species did not emerge fully formed in a single day. Fossils and dating methods allow researchers to refine its history; they do not identify one particular individual from whom all of us suddenly began. Nature / Scientific Reports, Nature / Scientific Reports.

The eyes in a museum reconstruction are particularly compelling. They seem to narrow the distance between an exhibit and a living person. This is also where it becomes easy to see more than the evidence permits. A skull helps reconstruct the shape of the head and face, and ancient DNA sometimes suggests probable pigmentation traits. Expression, hairstyle and many soft-tissue details leave room for the reconstructors’ judgement. Such an image needs to be considered alongside an explanation of how it was made. Natural History Museum.

The Neanderthal reconstructed by the Kennis brothers for London’s Natural History Museum is based on remains from Spy in Belgium, roughly forty thousand years old. His robust body and distinctive facial features cannot tell us whether he was cruel, kind, attentive to children or difficult to talk to. Those qualities cannot be read from the shape of a brow ridge. Natural History Museum.

When human history is told through its strongest hunters and most successful conquerors, much of the daily work disappears. A child needed food, warmth, protection and teaching long before being able to provide for themselves. Survival also depended on whether adults found food, shared it and maintained relationships with other people. Childcare and social connections belong in human history alongside tools. Smithsonian.

Reproduction alone did not necessarily mean population growth. Births had to exceed deaths, which required conditions in which children survived to adulthood. For a small group, losing a few people could mean losing food, knowledge, care and the possibility of continuing the family line at once. Relationships between groups mattered too: they affected who could form a family together and who could be approached for help.

Ancient DNA makes it possible to examine these relationships much more specifically than before. Research on remains from Chagyrskaya Cave identified close relatives among Neanderthals, including a father and daughter. The genetic evidence is also consistent with small communities maintaining connections through women moving between them. This is a finding about a particular community studied by researchers, rather than a complete account of every ancient family. Nature / Scientific Reports.

Small population size and prolonged isolation make a population more vulnerable. When close relatives have children together, a child is more likely to inherit two copies of a particular harmful recessive gene variant. A small group also faces accidental losses, poor seasons, disease and a shortage of partners. This helps explain why connections beyond one’s immediate circle could matter for survival.

It does not, however, establish a simple story in which Neanderthals died out because of close-relative reproduction. The genome of a Neanderthal nicknamed Thorin suggested prolonged isolation of his lineage. Meanwhile, research on other remains from Belgium and France, published in 2026, did not find the expected progressive genetic deterioration before those populations disappeared. Different groups had different histories; there is no single established explanation for Neanderthal disappearance. Cell Genomics (2024), MPI EVA, Max Planck.

The disappearance of a particular group, the disappearance of a species and a genetic contribution to descendants are different things. Some Neanderthal inheritance survives in the DNA of living people. Even here, the word “disappeared” needs qualification. Natural History Museum.

Cheddar Man lived in what is now Britain approximately ten thousand years ago. His example makes it particularly clear how easily we project present-day expectations into the past. DNA evidence informed a reconstruction with dark skin and light eyes, a combination many people found surprising. Pigmentation predictions carry uncertainty, and an exact skin shade cannot be extracted from a genome like a paint code. Nevertheless, the present-day appearance of a country’s population is not a reliable portrait of the people who lived there thousands of years earlier. Natural History Museum, Natural History Museum.

During roughly the last twelve thousand years, farming and animal husbandry began spreading in different places. Food production, settlements and the subsequent growth of towns changed living conditions. There were more opportunities to accumulate stores, exchange the results of work and sustain larger communities. New ways of depending on other people’s power and decisions emerged alongside them. History continued through increasingly complex societies. Smithsonian.

In Ingres’s 1823 portrait of Jacques-Louis Leblanc, there is plenty to examine in the clothes, posture and details of the room. They tell us about a particular person’s time and position. His face itself does not need translating from an earlier biological version. The people living roughly two hundred years ago were Homo sapiens like us. Evolution has not stopped, but clothes, nutrition, health, grooming and photographic conditions explain much of the visible difference between historical portraits and present-day photographs. The Met, Smithsonian.

Robert Cornelius’s 1839 photograph narrows that distance further. Here is a person’s gaze captured by a camera, although long before the instant images familiar to us. In the 1921 photograph of Einstein, the distance becomes smaller still. We see a person from roughly a century ago, rather than an intermediate evolutionary step between ancient humans and ourselves. Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons.

These portraits do not represent everyone in their respective periods: they show particular men with particular biographies. Likewise, a contemporary space programme crew represents a profession and shared work, rather than a “highest” human type. People living today in different countries and cultures are equally contemporary. Skin colour, wealth and access to technology do not determine a place on an imagined evolutionary ladder.

An account of ancient humans who did nothing but attack and take is as incomplete as an account of a conflict-free past. Researchers found evidence of violence in remains from Jebel Sahaba in the Nile Valley. Reanalysis suggested several violent episodes, rather than necessarily one major battle. This shows that people seriously harmed one another long before modern states existed. It does not demonstrate that every community lived that way. Nature / Scientific Reports.

There are other finds too. The Neanderthal Shanidar 1 lived with serious injuries and, according to the museum’s interpretation, probably needed his group’s assistance. We cannot reconstruct his conversations or name exactly what the people around him felt. Yet a long life with such limitations gives grounds for considering support. Care for a vulnerable person also left a trace in ancient history. Smithsonian.

It is therefore difficult to describe empathy as the newest quality that humanity has finally grown into. The foundations of care and cooperation are ancient. The harder question is whom we include among those whose suffering matters to us. Someone can be an attentive father and remain indifferent to other people’s children. People can help their own group while supporting cruelty towards those they have been taught to regard as dangerous or inferior.

Widening that circle involves upbringing, personal experience, culture and the rules of shared life. Biological relatedness alone has not made us equal in our own eyes. Even equality that has been formally proclaimed needs continuing protection.

A person receives a message from their manager: “Tomorrow we’ll talk about your work.” There is no accusation or threat in the message, but the coming conversation already occupies the evening. A reply forms in their head, followed by a sharper version, followed by the urge to write first and put everyone in their place. The conversation has not happened, but an opponent already exists.

Here we can notice how anticipating danger affects behaviour. Yet it would be too easy to call every sharp reply a direct inheritance from cave-dwelling life. Personal experience, exhaustion, actual workplace relationships and previous injustices also affect a reaction. Evolutionary history helps explain our general capacity to respond to threats; a particular argument needs to be considered in its own circumstances.

The need for safety is understandable. Problems arise when suspicion becomes sufficient evidence, group membership takes the place of checking facts, and controlling others seems the only way to feel calmer. Technology also scales up the cost of these decisions. An insulting remark can recruit thousands into harassment, while the decision of a small circle can destroy the lives of enormous numbers of others.

This is one of the central tensions in our situation: our capabilities grow quickly, while we learn to handle them unevenly. Sophisticated technology does not abolish envy, fear, revenge or the desire to dominate. It can give them a much greater reach.

Richard Schwartz’s approach, Internal Family Systems or IFS, offers one way to discuss conflicting inner reactions. It describes inner experience through different “parts”: one might demand an attack, another want to hide, and a third criticise any sign of weakness. Within this model, even a destructive response is explored in terms of its protective intention. “Parts” and Self are concepts within a therapeutic model; they should not be understood as separate anatomical brain regions or literal inhabitants inside a person. IFS Institute.

This language can help us examine an internal conflict without immediately blaming ourselves. For example, I want to talk to someone close to me while already preparing to punish them with silence. Staying with that contradiction briefly may allow me to ask what I am trying to achieve, and what will happen to the conversation if I start punishing them.

Trauma nevertheless involves harm and should not be declared beneficial simply because someone managed to adapt. A protective response may have helped a person endure particular circumstances without making those circumstances necessary. Similarly, guilt may concern harm actually caused, hurt may relate to genuine injustice, and the need for protection may concern danger that is still present.

For this reason, we cannot explain every war through rulers’ childhood trauma or offer inner work in place of resisting violence. Interests, resources, ideologies and opportunities to avoid accountability also influence decisions. Understanding an inner reaction is useful when it helps us act more responsibly. It does not remove responsibility for an attack or oblige an injured person to become more accommodating to someone who harms them.

Respecting another person does not require accepting their power over you. When someone uses violence, understanding their feelings cannot replace stopping the attack, helping those harmed and holding those responsible accountable. For a person living through war, an invitation simply to stop seeing an enemy may amount to a demand to ignore a very real danger.

Humanity has already developed rules intended to limit cruelty even during armed conflict: protecting civilians, the wounded and prisoners, and prohibiting torture. Their existence does not mean they are respected everywhere. It means that certain actions can no longer be justified solely by the wish to win. ICRC.

Likewise, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in 1948, affirmed equality in human dignity and rights. This was a cultural and political achievement that did not require a new biological species to emerge. It can be supported or violated, strengthened or weakened. UN.

The win-win principle makes sense where parties can negotiate freely and honour agreements. In a family, that may mean sharing childcare; at work, clear terms of cooperation. When one side reserves the right to coerce, an appealing word such as “interaction” changes nothing. A shared outcome requires conditions in which refusal is also possible.

Around 1800, the world’s population approached one billion. The UN associates the eight-billion milestone with November 2022. This increase reflects, among other things, more children surviving and people having better chances to live longer. It would be odd to regard lives saved only as a demographic problem. UN DESA.

Nevertheless, a large population needs food, housing, water and energy. The consequences depend on production and consumption, inequality and who has access to resources. The same number of people can place very different pressures on the environment. Reducing the issue to humans having “reproduced too much” would overlook a substantial part of its causes. IPCC.

Climate change already shows how the success of one activity can cause losses far beyond it. The IPCC’s assessment links each additional increment of global warming to increasing risks. This is not a prediction of inevitable human extinction. It is sufficient reason to consider how today’s decisions affect the conditions in which others will live. IPCC.

What follows is an imagined episode. We do not know whether people will have museums in a thousand years, what those museums might look like or how people will describe us. But we can suppose that one visitor stops in front of a recording of news from our time. She sees an operation that saved a child, followed by a destroyed hospital. She sees people who spent years building a city, and people who deliberately destroyed it.

Perhaps it is the proximity of those capabilities that surprises her. The same generations knew how to sustain life under extraordinarily difficult conditions and found reasons to take it away. They could explain the physics of flight, but could not always tolerate another person’s right to live by their own rules.

Or perhaps this visitor will be more cautious in her judgements. Conflict, fear and the temptation to misuse power may persist in her time too. She will read our records without assuming her own faultlessness, noticing those who helped, protected others, refused criminal orders, preserved knowledge or tried to reach agreement where agreement was possible.

Her very existence would mean earlier generations had left her conditions in which to live. What those conditions were, and what had been paid for them, would also depend on the decisions we make now. The attraction of this imagined future is the chance to look at our actions from further away. What seems a sufficient reason for cruelty today may prove a very weak explanation to the people who inherit its consequences.

After considering millennia, returning to a single message from a manager feels slightly odd. Yet here is an opportunity to examine something without imagining that we can transform humanity at once. We can write down what literally happened, what we added in our interpretation and what we are about to do. “I was asked to talk” differs from “they have decided to humiliate me.” If humiliation has happened before, that belongs in the account as a fact too, rather than persuading ourselves that the danger must be imaginary.

Another brief exercise is to set out conflicting wishes on paper. For example: I want an explanation, I want to retaliate, I fear losing my job, and I am angry about an earlier injustice. We can draw these positions separately and consider which action addresses the actual situation and which would make things worse. This kind of map echoes the language of “parts” in IFS, but does not require treating every thought as a hidden memory or forcing ourselves to revisit traumatic experiences. IFS Institute.

A pause, a clarifying question, a direct refusal or another person’s support may help. In a dangerous situation, safety and assistance come first; observing ourselves does not oblige us to stay near someone who harms us. If such reactions remain exhausting or interfere with daily life, they can be explored with a professional, without demanding that one notebook entry resolve everything.

We have inherited the capacity to defend ourselves, form attachments, care, compete and learn. Each of these capacities can take different forms in different circumstances. Humanity’s future is not predetermined by any one of them, and there is no guarantee that the next century will automatically make us more considerate towards one another.

In the photograph from Jebel Irhoud, researchers carefully remove earth from around the bones. Little remains of the people who lived there, yet we still spend years trying to understand them more accurately. We will probably leave considerably more records. I would like those records to show how we learned to use our capabilities, and why we chose to preserve one another’s lives.

After the larger history of humanity, our own anger may seem too small a subject. Yet it often brings together the desire to protect something important, the fear of losing our place and the temptation to make someone else submit. In my book Anger: From Fire to Choice, I return to this point through texts, questions and written reflection: what do I notice, what am I trying to defend, and what will I do with this feeling?

This is a Ukrainian-language hardcover workbook: 414 pages, five thematic parts, six practice sequences of 28 steps each, and an observation journal. It can support sustained reflection as readers return to their own situations. The number of pages completed does not measure maturity or guarantee that difficult reactions will disappear. What matters is whether the situation becomes clearer and what action I choose. Book details.

If feelings are still difficult to name, the EQ Emotions Journal offers a place to pause at a specific event and record your response, then notice what repeats. When a conversation repeatedly ends in agreeing against your wishes or trying to control someone else, personal boundaries and the Diary of the Owner of Her Borders may provide a relevant focus for written reflection.

These publications offer space and structure for observation. They do not replace help when someone faces violence, lasting exhaustion or a condition they find difficult to manage alone. We can continue the conversation about the future in a very concrete way: examine today’s situation, avoid excusing the harm done, and identify an action for which we are willing to take responsibility.