For much too long, the world’s scientific community has directed the discussion of our incredible evolution. As a matter of fact, our species’ biological, physiological, psychological, and cultural evolution has been instigated, propelled, and shaped by our economic adaptation to a fluctuating environment. In a very real sense, the scientists are so far into the trees that they have actually ignored the forest. Consequently, we teach human evolution as a hodgepodge of different theories within the realm of microevolution, thus failing to understand or even to recognize the economic thread that binds them altogether.
By integrating the timeline of our prehistoric past with that of our earliest known economies (food gathering, scavenging, and nomadism), the author was able to synthesize a sequence of events that illustrates the economic basis of our remarkable ascension and the beginnings of our present day institutions. He not only reveals the genesis behind the cultural forces that exist within every human society, but for the first time, he has created a systematic and holistic approach in explaining the “how” and the “why” we have economically, physiologically, and then culturally evolved. For unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, we have possessed the extraordinary ability to change our economy, which has made us an extremely adaptable species.
Gregory Short is a retired world history, political science, and economics teacher with almost forty years of teaching experience. He received a History degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1976, before pursuing graduate studies in Public Administration and Education. In 1981, he graduated from the American Economic Institute of Free Enterprise at Texas A&M. He has researched the subject of our incredible economic evolution for over twenty years. In 2012, his military autobiography from 1967-1970, “Ground-Pounder,” was published by the University of North Texas Press.