The specialization of the human brain has allowed people to experiment with progressions that are powerful but potentially self-destructing. According to Ronald Wright, the most severe of these “progress traps” is the atomic bomb, capable of annihilating the entire human species (30). However, “much simpler progressions have seduced and ruined societies in the past” (30). Advancements such as the perfection of hunting, the invention of farming and worldwide civilization are progress traps that make humans a vulnerable species. The uncertainty of the consequences of these progress traps is the reason the second chapter of The History of Progress is entitled “The Great Experiment.”
The first progress trap is the perfection of hunting. During the Upper Paleolithic, Cro-Magnons developed lighter, sharper, longer-ranged and deadlier weapons (36). These developments were responsible for the extinctions of the mammoth and woolly rhino from Europe and Asia, the giant wombat, giant tortoise and other marsupials from Australia and the camel, giant bison, giant sloth, horse and mammoth from the Americas (37). Humans had industrial slaughter sites capable of hunting a thousand mammoths or 100,000 horses (38). Though the perfection of hunting led to short-term prosperity, in the long run, humans effectively killed off their food supply. By bankrupting the land, humans became dangerously marginal during the Mesolithic era, when “sculptures and carvings became rare” (39-40). As humans drove species after species to extinction, they walked into the first progress trap. Fortunately, the unconscious experiment of farming carried humans into another age of prosperity.