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The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own.

We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens, pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species.

As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives us a strangely mixed picture of both success - rising from small numbers to our current around eight billion and dominating much of the globe - and failure. Agriculture, for example, enabled the explosion in population but also made for a non-ideal diet and lifestyle. (It's arguable, though, that without it we wouldn't have science, for example, which perhaps is worth those issues.) It seems that, for a number of reasons in the way we developed, our species is particular susceptible to disease. But the negatives have, so far, largely been countered by our ingenuity - meaning that despite everything ranged against us, humans today are living longer and better lives than we ever did as hunter gatherers.

This success, though, Gee tells us, still leaves us on the brink of a collapse. After reaching a peak, population is expected to shrink - he worries that this will reduce our pool of potential genius, meaning we may not be able to continue the technological solutions that have kept us going to date. Climate change and resource scarcity add to the potential to reduce our numbers to the extent that our species' inevitable extinction looms closer.

The final section, Escape, is where Gee presents his solution to decline. This, I'd suggest is the weakest part of the book. Venturing into space is seen as the only way forward (like me, Gee is a science fiction aficionado) - I find it hard to believe that there aren't other, less dramatic, potential technological patches that could be applied. While I don't doubt our eventual extinction, I also think that (unless brought on by something like nuclear war, which isn't mentioned) we are more capable of manipulating our environment here on Earth for survival than Gee gives us credit, making the end perhaps further away than is suggested. And manipulating Earth's environment will always be far easier than starting from scratch in space, where there are so many other obstacles to be overcome.

This remains a very thought-provoking book that is highly engaging. Despite his academic origins, Gee writes with a light touch that sometimes feels more like a chat in the pub than reading a popular science title. We have a tendency as a species to assume that we'll always be here - but clearly we won't. The reality is sometimes stark, but always interesting.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

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