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A few brave wolves began following the humans back to their camps. The humans would sit around the fire, eating and joking and telling ghost stories, and the wolves watched them from the nearby forest. When the humans extinguished the fire and moved their camp, the wolves came to sniff around for leftovers. To do all this, wolves had to watch humans carefully and understand their ways. They needed to know when humans were hungry or irritated—better stay away!—and when humans were relaxed—time to get close! Some wolves got quite good at understanding humans, and these wolves got more food. With time, these wolves became a bit more like dogs…but they weren’t yet dogs. They were middle-of-the-way wolfdogs. Humans saw that these wolfdogs were hanging around their camp, but as long as the wolfdogs knew their place and didn’t do anything nasty like bite someone, they didn’t mind. In fact, the humans discovered that wolfdogs could be quite helpful.
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Farmers constantly worried about the next month and the next year. They were much more anxious than gatherers because they had no choice—they always had to think about the future because they rarely ate what they found that day.
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When people started farming, they lived in small villages. One village had 60 people, another had 100, and the really big villages had perhaps 300. As farmers burned more forests, sowed more fields, raised more sheep, and had more kids, some villages grew into towns with thousands of people. The towns also grew bigger over time. In places such as the Middle East, India, China, and Mexico, cities with tens of thousands of people appeared. These cities often had strong walls, big temples, and a beautiful palace where a king lived. Some of the kings ruled not only one city but an entire kingdom, which included many towns and villages.
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for millions of years the human brain had adapted to store only certain types of information. In order to survive, our gatherer ancestors had to remember many details about animals and plants. They had to remember that in autumn, you could gather nuts in the wood; in winter, it was best not to go into the cave in the mountain because a big scary bear lived there; and in spring, you could find beehives in the bushes near the river. Gatherers also had to remember so much stuff about the few dozen people in their band. They needed to remember who was good at climbing trees and who was good at healing broken bones. If you fell from a tree, better ask help from the healer—not the climber. They needed to remember who was nice and who was grumpy. If they needed a favor, better ask the nice person! So the human brain evolved to store information about animals, plants, and other humans. That’s why you probably have no trouble remembering interesting things about animals and you know exactly who in your classroom is your friend…and who isn’t
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