3 THE SAPIENS’ SUPERPOWER

CHAPTER 2 THE SAPIENS' SUPERPOWER

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BANANA ADVENTURES SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT HAPPENED 50,000 YEARS ago? What superpower did Sapiens get that allows us to rule the planet today? The answer isn't obvious. Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and all the other comic superheroes are powerful because they're strong, fast and brave. But Sapiens weren't stronger, faster or braver than Neanderthals—or plenty of other animals, for that matter. In a fight with a wolf, a crocodile or a chimpanzee, a Sapiens would have very little chance of winning. Even an old grandma chimpanzee could beat the world boxing champion. The only reason we can scare away wolves and lock chimpanzees in zoos is that we cooperate in very large numbers. One human can't defeat one chimpanzee, but a thousand humans can achieve incredible things that chimpanzees can't even dream of. And it's thanks to our secret superpower that we can cooperate better than any other animal. We can even cooperate with complete strangers.

Take, for example, the last piece of fruit you ate. Maybe it was a banana. Where did that banana come from? If you were a chimp, you'd have to go to the forest and pick a banana yourself. But because you're a human, you usually rely on help from strangers. Very few people pick their own bananas. In most cases, someone you've never met and never will meet grew this banana thousands of miles from you. Then other strangers put it on a truck, a train or perhaps a ship and transported it to your local shop. Then you went to the shop, chose your banana, took it to the cashier, and gave the cashier some money. And that's how you got your banana. How many people touched that banana before you bought it? How many of these people do you know personally? Maybe you don't know any of them… but they helped you get your banana. Or think about your school. How many people make up a school? First of all, you need lots of students. Without them, the school would be pointless! How many kids are there at your school? Then you need teachers. Try to count how many teachers your school has. And there are the people who built the school, the people who clean it, the people who serve food in its cafeteria, the people who generate electricity so you have light in the classroom, the people who wrote and printed all the textbooks, and many, many others. So, all in all, how many people does it take to make a school? And how many of them do you know personally?

All the big achievements of humankind, such as flying to the Moon, were the result of cooperation between hundreds of thousands of people. In 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon. He got there by flying in a spaceship, but he didn't build the spaceship himself. Countless people cooperated to build the spaceship: miners extracted iron from the earth to build it, engineers designed it, mathematicians calculated the best course to the Moon, technicians made special boots so that Armstrong could walk on the Moon, and farmers grew bananas so that the astronauts would have something to eat in space.