The World Without Us

Until only recently, it was known as the Hemlock Forest for its shady stands of that graceful conifer, but almost every hemlock here is now dead, slain by a Japanese insect smaller than the period at the end of this

A generation ago, humans eluded nuclear annihilation; with luck, we’ll continue to dodge that and other mass terrors. But now we often find ourselves asking whether inadvertently we’ve poisoned or parboiled the planet, ourselves included. We’ve also used and abused water and soil so that there’s a lot less of each, and trampled thousands of species that probably aren’t coming back. Our world, some respected voices warn, could one day degenerate into something resembling a vacant lot, where crows and rats scuttle among weeds, preying on each other. If it comes to that, at what point would things have gone so far that, for all our vaunted superior intelligence, we’re not among the hardy survivors?

you know that nature wasn’t fazed

the correct answer to whether this world would go on without us, says the Dalai Lama, is: “Who knows?”

The world has always changed. It’s not a constant place.

the most valuable library yet assembled—a half-million papyrus scrolls in Alexandria, some of them Aristotle’s—was perfectly preserved until a bishop lit a torch to expel paganism.

“By definition, we’re the alien invader. Everywhere except Africa. Every time Homo sapiens went anywhere else, things went extinct.”

Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings.

We come to study ancient civilization, but we end up learning about now.

Archaeology isn’t about glittery objects—it’s about their context.