Navigating evolutionary labyrinths, 14 escape routes for humanity

Hey, explorers of the STEAM cosmos! Ready your minds to embark on a journey through the fascinating world of human evolution, scientists have deployed their masterminds and are unraveling how we might be stumbling upon 14 evolutionary dead ends. Let’s discover these unexplored corners together! Yes, it’s like an escape game, but in real life, and humanity does not want to get trapped. Imagine this as the most recent episode of our epic series, the Anthropocene, where we humans are the protagonists, but, spoiler alert: there are cracks appearing in our success story. The Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, financial crises, and more, are creating what scientists call a “polycrisis” – it’s as if all the villains have come together in one big cosmic crossover.

According to Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, the mastermind behind our evolutionary narrative, our creativity and cunning are playing tricks on us. We are so ingenious that we are stumbling over our own wonders! “We have been too successful and, in some ways, too smart for our own future good.” Who knew being too cool would be a problem, right? In their new research, Peter and his team have identified 14 evolutionary traps, like difficult levels in a video game, from simplified agriculture to rampant artificial intelligence, the list is longer than the line at a rock concert!

For example, simplifying agriculture is like relying only on your favorite snacks. Yes, it’s great at first, but you’re left scrambling when you get tired of them or run out! The crazy thing is that 12 of these traps are about to become dead ends, and 10 of them are dragging us in the wrong direction, it’s as if we were in a maze game and someone had lost the map. But here comes the most impressive part: these evolutionary traps tend to reinforce each other; if we get caught in one, we are more likely to get entangled in others. It’s like falling into an evolutionary black hole that we can’t get out of! The assessment also points out that our evolutionary forces are not synchronized globally, problems grow in distant places, and global collaboration is like trying to make a video call with a bad connection. It does not work well!

But, stop right there, STEAM heroes, all is not lost, scientists say we can get out of this mess, but we need to actively transform our societies. The Anthropocene is not just an accident, it is time for us to wake up and take control of our evolutionary history. So how can we do it? Peter gives us the key: get more involved in nature and society. Learning about the global consequences of our local actions is like having a superpower of awareness and there is nothing better than exposing ourselves to what we need to protect. So, STEAM team, let’s change the evolutionary game! We don’t want to get stuck in those dead ends!