I understand that it took quite a few million years for humans to accommodate to their environment, but why did apes for example stay the same approximately while we had all the advancement. For example why are we into philosophy, writing manifestos, infrastructure, complex design, technology etc while apes aren’t exactly.
Why did it take us 6 million years of hunting to think about farming?
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A couple things here! First, how we conceptualize ‘civilization’ should be scrutinized a little. You’ve implied that civilization begins with farming. That is indeed what we are taught from the time we are young, and it’s not necessarily a bad framework. But people were existing in societies with varying degrees of plant and animal domestication for a long time before the first settlements.
One theory I have heard on this is that when the environment is plentiful and conditions are favorable, people seem to get along just fine. They have no need to settle or produce a great surplus. It seems to have been when conditions became harsh for one reason or another, that people had to make different choices.
Another interesting bit is that settling seemed to actually *shorten* lifespans, increase work, spread disease, promote division of labor, and lead to class divisions wherein one special tier of human was in charge of managing the surplus made by laborers. And well, the rest is history!
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