The rise of humans

There are over eight billion people alive today. We’ve explored every corner of the planet, built cities, and cured diseases.

Despite this, we’re not the strongest animal, the fastest, or even the most fierce. We can’t outrun a cheetah or wrestle an elephant and we don’t have claws or fangs to catch wild prey.

How are humans so successful? What’s the secret superpower that lets us run the world?

Building blocks of life

DNA is inside every living thing. It tells cells how to grow and work. If DNA is the instruction manual, genes are individual instructions.

Our closest living relative is the chimpanzee. Human and chimp DNA is 98.8% the same but both have very different life experiences. Speaking to Science+Nature, geneticist (a scientist who studies genes) Aoife McLysaght says the answer to how humans took over the world isn’t in how similar our genes are but in how they’re used. Think of your genes as keys on a piano: chimps and humans may have almost exactly the same keys but we play very different tunes.

Past people

In 1856, German archeologists dug up a skull with a low forehead and thick eyebrow ridge. They thought it belonged to a cave bear or a human whose bones had been deformed by disease. Instead, they had found a different kind of human: a Neanderthal.

When scientists sequenced the Neanderthal genome (decoded its set of genes), they discovered that most of us carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA.

Modern humans have been around for over 300,000 years but there have been other species of humans on planet Earth for 2.5 million years. As well as European Neanderthals there were Asian Denisovans, and even a tiny “hobbit” species of human in Oceania called Homo floresiensis. There may have been nine different species of human alive at the same time.

Today, there’s just us: Homo sapiens.

Changing tunes

So how did our tune change over time? Evolution. Living things adapt over millions of years as the world changes. Those that change best to suit their environment tend to survive and pass on their genes. Neanderthals and other species may have struggled as Homo sapiens spread.

So if evolution gave us bodies that aren’t big, strong, or fast, is our true power in our brains? Modern humans have a talent for teamwork that is hard to find in other species. No other mammal cooperates like people do. One study found chimpanzees were selfish compared to people. Even before humans can read or write, we have an urge to cooperate and help each other.

Evolution hasn’t finished. Aoife McLysaght spoke of Tibetan people whose bodies have evolved to create more red blood cells, which allows them to carry more oxygen around the body and cope with the thin mountain air. McLysaght says that this amazing adaptation was inherited from Denisovans. Reshaping our bodies like this takes thousands of years but the incredible thing about humans is that we don’t have to wait to see change.

Let your imagination run wild

Neuroscientist (someone who studies how brains work) Bethany Ranes reckons imagination might give humankind the edge. She says “imagination is your brain’s built-in simulator, constantly running ‘what if?’ scenarios to help you predict, plan, and adapt.” In other words, it’s a survival tool. Your brain is a time machine, grabbing bits of the past and stitching them into a future that hasn’t yet happened.

Animals forward-plan. Some birds imagine the future and hide food in locations where they’ll be hungry tomorrow but no species does it like us. We also take it one step further because we don’t just imagine on our own: we can imagine the same things as other humans.

Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari told Science+Nature that thousands of strangers happily work together because we share the same beliefs. The money in your pocket is really just paper and metal. It only has value because everyone agrees it does. Money, countries and laws are all invisible ideas we agree on. All of this drives humans in the same shared direction. No other animal does that.

Harari leaves us with a big thought. If stories are our superpower, we can change the world by telling a different one.

Things that go bump in the night

Ever felt strange before going to bed?

Before nice modern homes, our ancestors would have slept in the wild where hungry predators like wolves and lions would be looking for their next meal.

If you’ve ever thought there’s a monster under the bed, Yuval Noah Harari says that fear is really just a memory from thousands of years ago. Waking up in the middle of the night because you feel uneasy, or even being afraid of the dark, is just a survival instinct.

It’s better than being eaten.

Also

Homo sapiens means “wise man”.

Denisovans were first described in 2010.

In total, about 117 billion people have existed throughout history.

First published in The Week Junior Science+Nature, issue 105, October 2026.