Storia di una specie: Decadenza e caduta dell'impero umano

by Henry Gee, Carla Palmieri (Translator)

La straordinaria storia di Homo sapiens, da trionfatore del mondo ad architetto della propria fine, in un saggio profondo, brillante, provocatorio che mescola ricerche scientifiche all'avanguardia, evoluzione, sociologia, biologia, per dimostrare che noi umani siamo sull'orlo dell'estinzione. Eppure abbiamo ancora una possibilità di sottrarci a questo triste destino e vivere, potenzialmente, per milioni di anni. Riusciremo a cavarcela?


Siamo abituati a pensare che la vita dell'uomo sulla Terra sia destinata a durare per sempre. È vero che tutte le altre specie prima o poi si sono estinte, e che Homo sapiens non dovrebbe fare eccezione, però è innegabile che sia eccezionale: in un tempo geologicamente brevissimo, ha dominato il destino di ogni altra forma vivente, ha penetrato i segreti dell'atomo per sfruttarne l'energia, ha svelato i misteri genetici della vita per manipolarla, ha sondato i confini dell'Universo... Sembra ragionevole chiedersi se gli umani non siano in grado anche di sfuggire alla grande falce dell'estinzione, prevista dagli scienziati tra una decina di migliaia di anni. La risposta scontata sarebbe: no. Anche perché il genere umano è diventato così dominante da minacciare il funzionamento dell'ecosistema che garantisce la sua stessa sopravvivenza. Con il rigore scientifico del paleontologo e l'arguzia dello scrittore di science fiction, Henry Gee intreccia scienza e futurologia per descrivere la parabola di questa folle umanità. Chiudendo con un bagliore di speranza: esiste una possibilità di sottrarci a un destino segnato, ma il tempo a disposizione è poco e tutto è affidato al nostro ingegno. Cosa potrà andare storto?

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Anthropology, Evolution, Climate Change, Audiobook

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 13, 2025

About the author

Henry Gee's next book The Wonder of Life on earth, illustrated by Raxenne Maniquiz, is out on 5 February 2026. His other books include The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth (winner of the 2022 Royal Society Science Book Prize) and The Science of Middle earth. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages. He is represented by Jill Grinberg Literary Management and lives in Cromer, England.

Reviews

[Brian Clegg]

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.

[Henk]

Very thought-provoking take on how humanity developed as a species, what it's current trajectory is and how the future could look like. Although I find the solution proposed for our conundrum unconvincing (let's go to space!), the book is written in a very accessible manner.
The answer is that humans will perish, along with everything else.

Taking a long view, Henry Gee covers how humanity rose as dominant species. This historical section resonated most with me and made me think of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, with thought provoking takes on how we transitioned from hunter gatherers to farmers. In general The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction is loosely inspired by the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire of Gibson. The section on our current unprecedented decrease of the global population, reflecting a combination of economic worries, emancipation, dropping sperm counts due to environmental influences, societal change and climate change induced stresses, was good as well, even though it read at times as extended Financial Times/Economist article.

The final section was definitely weakest, pivoting to living in asteroids and gene editing to bring about a new frontier for the species. Maybe this is the boldness we need as a species, but I found it unconvincing and techno-utopian. Also the whole concept of more humans equals more progress feels logical but if we look back at how we were able to figure out scientific concepts like gravity, chemistry and evolution, to name just a few, with less than a billion humans makes the argument feel weaker. I guess my main unanswered question is how 1 billion humans (prognosis for 2300) unsustainable from an evolutionary perspective, given at the time of Napoleon we were at the same number and the species even survived at just a few thousand breeding individuals?

An interesting read that allows us to do something no other species can do, namely zoom out and reflect on our longevity.

Observations and quotes:
There is more genetic diversity in a clan of chimpanzees than in the whole of humanity

Wherever homo sapiens went, destruction followed

Population growth peaking in the 1960s

Going into space? I would think that gene editing would be a more logical route towards human evolution.

The clock is ticking for our species, with our time left being estimated below 10.000 years by the author, very short in a geological timescale, for Homo Sapiens to change

Lucy dying from falling out of a tree

No other mammals are fully bipedal

Pelvis being narrow (for better locomotion) versus being wider to ensure easier giving birth remains a significant battle during evolution of humans

Humans initially evolved as endurance runners, slower but more tenacious than the wild they hunted in groups.

More than half of modern day Pakistani marriages being between second cousins removed or closer

Humans, pre-agricultural revolution, were always rare

2% of non-African human DNA is attributable to Neanderthals

Newton = 500 million people
Einstein = 1.6 billion people

Technology progressing incredibly slow when human population were living in small, unconnected communities

Increasing evidence that agriculture rose as Homo Sapiens wiped out most of the wildlife heavier than 40kg

Humans only domesticated 14 animal species, yet of the 200+ known diseases that humans suffer from, over 100 are related to animals we domesticated

Farmers being sicker due to higher population density and zoonoses, and lower food variety

Bananas being genetically clones and super susceptible to blights

Inbreeding increases risks of relatively rare diseases

Human diversity being limited by near extinction events in the history of the species

1.280 breeding humans for millennia at the bottleneck of history, explaining a lack in genetic variety in our species. It is interesting to consider if we were more diverse what the world would look like.

Chimpanzees only suffering from a few indigenous diseases

The world supporting c. 10 million people when we were hunter gatherers

From 1960 for the first time Homo Sapiens population growth started to decrease

23 countries forecast to half their population in 2100 at current replacement rates

Didn’t know the Watersnoodsramp was a thing in England as well

Unknown reason of decreasing sperm count across the world

Mammalian species in general have a lifespan of no more than 1 or 2 million years

Habitat destruction even leads to extinction of dominant species, with degradation of habitat leading to the emergence of competing, more efficient species in the degraded habitat

An estimated 25-40% of the products of all photosynthesis on earth is sequestered by humans

Increase of rice production by 36% per acre in the 70s, but only 7% after the effects of the Green Revolution

Gene editing to produce more effective photosynthesis

RuBisCO enzyme leads to loss of at least 50% of energy gained by plants from catching sunlight, while being the most abundant enzyme in the world. Evolved in a planet that had much lower carbon levels than currently and with a less bright sun (with plants not being able to absorb over 90% of energy gained from the midday sun)

Maximum current photosynthetic efficiency in plants estimated at 8%

Since 1980 tree cover grew by 9 times the UK in predominantly in temperate regions, while the biologically most diverse habitats like rain and cloud forests decreasing significantly

Rabbits being introduced to the UK by the Romans

Pristine landscapes simply don’t exist

Our species has defined itself and found success by passing into new habitats, now space as a new frontier

Already our cities are completely humanly constructed

Biosphere 2 failed due to growth of bacteria, stable biomes being incredibly hard to create

6 out of 10 robotised missions to Mars being unsuccessful

Living in astroids - I am very doubtful about this solution

There are therefore no rational reasons for anyone to settle in space - I agree, maybe lets focus on taking better care of the planet instead of focusing on a tech utopia in space for evolutionary purposes

[Elentarri]

Henry Gee came up with a nifty title, some vague but old ideas, and then wrote a book with contents and style that is uninspired, repetitive, lacklustre, and muddled. This book is not nearly as entertaining or informative as his previous books. It also doesn't cover any new ground. Human evolution, extinction in general, the demise of the human species, and human population decline are not new. Not keeping your eggs (or all your humans) in one basket is also not a novel concept. Gee covers the progress of humanity is three stages - Rise, Fall and Escape. The Rise portion of the book provides a superficial summary of what is known about human evolution. According to Gee, the pinnacle of human evolution was when just before all the other hominid species went extinct. Since humans no longer have a species with similar capabilities to compete against, it's all downhill from here. The Fall portion of the book breezes through a selected few factors detrimental to human existence: diminishing resources, low genetic variation, habitat degradation, stagnating economy, changing environment, disease and declining fertility that are setting homo sapiens up for collapse. The author practically ignores any other detrimental factors, such as nuclear war or another asteroid impact. The third aspect of this book involves Gee's fuzzy attempt at explaining how humans can escape this inevitable extinction by spreading out - into space (while somehow ignoring the 'founder effect' he mentioned a few chapters previously). The book, also, does not include one illustration, diagram, chart, or map. Henry Gee has a point, but this book is neither well written, nor the argument well thought out. This book is the author's half-hearted attempt to elaborate on THIS short article. Read the article, skip the book. Thoroughly disappointing.

[EmJ]

Don't let the doom and gloom title of this book deter you from reading it. The author traces the history of how humanity came to be in it's present form and explores possible futures for our species. While extinction is an obvious possibility, the author also takes time to show how humanity might be able to push off that fate. While this book is very heavily science based, the author writes in such a way that everything was easy to understand. My only complaint is that sometimes the author is a little bit repetitive. Overall I found this book interesting and thought provoking.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[♡ Martina ♡]

3.5 ⭐

Percepitemi confusa dopo essere stata bombardata da informazioni scientifiche a profusione!
L'autore si divide in tutto il saggio tra il realismo e l'utopia fantascientifica, assumendo un carattere ambivalente.
Da apprezzare particolarmente se siete alla ricerca di qualcosa che vi lasci confusi e disorientati ma anche più consapevoli sul fatto che l'Homo sapiens è veramente una specie assieme meravigliosa e terribile!

[G Flores]

Mankind certainly does love thinking about how it will die almost as much as it loves figuring out how to live forever doesn't it? Gee channels both impulses into this pithy volume with a certain effortlessness that keeps the humor from diluting the information and keeps the information from depressing the hell out of you. It's an interesting line to walk and it is done rather deftly.

Unfortunately, there's not much more to say than that which is why I can't give it that fifth star. It is enjoyable, informative, doesn't overstay its welcome and moves along at a brisk pace. It's an excellent non-fiction palette cleanser if you've just read something very heavy and need something light but feel a need for something at least slightly informative.

Thank you to Net Galley for an advanced reading copy of this book to be published March 18th, 2025 at time of writing.

[Logan Kedzie]

The Rise and Fall of the Human Race is about the end of humanity. Not in the sense of a catalog, or as a prediction, but in a statistical or ecological (in the formal sense of the word) sense. If we take what we know about extinction as a process, and direct that analysis towards humans, what do we come up with?

The discussion of extinction science is the highlight of the book. The key observation is that the usual methods of looking at the end is wrong. Someone talking about existential risk has a risk in mind, and usually solution at a reasonable cost, but extinction is not about an extinction event as much as it is being in a state of vulnerability to extinction. This puts humans with a small amount of time, geologically speaking, like 10K years.

The writing is delightful. I want to go drinking with the author. The endnotes are frequently hilarious. The book is an introduction to great concepts like extinction debt. This is a book where the brevity is a problem. I wanted more writing and more detail on more things, and there are plenty of places for the author to expand.

Well, maybe. This book is an expansion of an article that the author wrote. Most of the best parts are shared with that article; the rest is the book-lentgh version of the difference between science and the humanities, sometimes memed as the difference between a high INT stat and an high WIS stat.

The author's solution to preventing humanity's extinction is for humans to expand into space. The reason this is the solution is a tautology: humans should go into space because they should go into space. Humanity will outstrip the carrying capacity of the earth, and the way to fix that is to go into space, which will require vastly expanding the carrying capacity of the earth, based on what will be required to support people living in space. Gay Space Communism is unexplored.

This might be an idle problem. The book could pass as a polemic with a few more expletives and polemics grade on their own curve. I share with the author the view that Ehrlich deserves contempt, but less than he gets*. It becomes a real issue because of the various fragments of argumentation in the book that feel like no one is minding the till.

The author posits our future as a vegan matriarchy on the basis of efficiency (rather than a fetish comic), that animals products are an inefficient way of getting calories and that the potential of women's contributions to society are historically untapped and must be in order for humanity to survive. However, this comes up in the context of solving the problem of food via artificial photosynthesis, which okay, cool, but at that point, you might as well just posit a cheesburger tree.

Similarly, the need for action now is due to the demographic cliff and its knock-on effects on human ingenuity and resources: the most people provides us with the most chance of having people who can solve the problem, and having too few people presents a possibility where there aren't enough people to provide the surplus necessary to allow people to investigate those problems as opposed to toil in the fields. The cause of this is multi-variable, but one elaborated on is 'female emancipation.'

That sound you are hearing is a thousand conservative influencers readying their keyboards.

A blanket statement of women had no rights, and now they do, deserves scrutiny. Technically correct it becomes an oversimplification to the point of misleading. Similarly, the expression of the crucial role of women in solving the problem is so causally engaged and unsupported that it achieves vaulted technically correct status.

A lot of the statements about history deserves scrutiny. The author accepts the 'own goal' view of Rapa Nui, sending the critics to an endnote. The author presents both The Great Hunger and 1995 Chicago in purely environmental terms. Neither are. Both are more in line with the author's extinction thesis, where the catastrophic event is ancillary to the systemic failure. People died en mass because of policy, not because of reality.

To that end, the book's conceit operates in a sort of twilight zone around Edward Gibbon. Yeah, it is what he wrote, but devoid of context before or hence, either of what Gibbon was doing or the way that the idea of decline, its uses, abuses, and intellectual or ideological history. This is no huge complaint, but it does start to feel like horseshoe theory on the wooification of science.

Oh, and it plays fast and loose with the science. I am not going to violate the terms of the ARC by a full quotation, but in the discussion of the concept of an evolutionary bottleneck applying to humans, the author raises the idea, notes that it is currently disfavored, and then uses it anyway on the basis that it is true "poetically."

Poetically true science? Is this like Justice Roberts' court of public opinion as regards Korematsu?

I get the core of the author's point. Humans, particularly in their status as the water sprouts on the otherwise dead branch of homo, exist in a sort of genetic risk that does not apply to other species. So why not eugenics? You cannot say eugenics does not work. We've established that the poetic truth of science is the important bit. Every bit of the argument here works for eugenics. It works better in fact. No need to worry about radiation's effect on developing children if we just kill the diabetics and autistics. Sure, they did not do it right before, (though I am certain you could find some human biodiversity folks to claim that they actually did), but this time it will be different.

Did any science fiction author read this manuscript?

In closing, I return to the tautology problem. The only reason that I can see that space travel was chosen is because extra-planetary living is "in" with the existential risk crowd. The same people looking to sell timeshares on the Moon are the most vocal about the author's concerns (and usually trying to get you to use crypto). But as far as I am concerned, the author has as good an explanation for why space will not save us. If the bottlenecks from founder effects are bad on earth, think how much worse space will be.

I loved the writing, and I loved the science. I now have a whole new scientific sub-discipline that I am interested in learning about. But - unintentionally - the author has written a pitch sheet for Bond villains.

My thanks to the author, Henry Gee, for writing the book, and to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, for making the ARC available to me.

* - There is a sidebar here that I may return to via blog about the author's use of The Population Bomb in general.

[Anshuman Swain]

3.5 rounded down to 3.

A really interesting premise for a book - the extinction and survival of humans. Although the book was well thought out in overall structure, the text was a bit repetitive and some parts were less well researched than others.

Overall, I felt that the length of the book could have been definitely shorter (The author mentions that this book grew out of an essay he wrote in a magazine, and maybe a length somewhere in between would have been nice).

[Cindy]

Homo Sapiens have at most 10,000 years left as a species unless we take to the stars. So asserts Henry Gee. Every chapter in this book starts with a quote from “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” and Gee draws compelling parallels from then to now.
He talks about isolated societies, a lack of genetic diversity, and how humans are more susceptible to disease than any other species on the planet because of our relatively small gene pool. Should our infrastructures fail and people become isolated again in small groups, it won’t be long (in evolutionary terms) before we die out. Yet, he admits that if/when we go to the stars, we will still have our limited gene pool with which to contend. Lots of food for thought presented clearly and almost breezily. The audiobook is well narrated.
My thanks to the author, publisher, @MacmillanAudio, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook for review purposes. Publication date: 18 March 2025.

[EmG ReadsDaily]

Interesting and thought-provoking.

My nerdy brain really enjoyed this exploration or the rise and fall of humankind. As an added bonus, the audiobook is narrated by the author.

[A YOGAM]

„Aufstieg und Fall der Menschheit“
Oder: Warum wir die Party verlassen, bevor das Buffet abgeräumt ist
Hatten Sie heute schon Angst vor Überbevölkerung? Entspannen Sie sich. Henry Gee erklärt mit trockenem britischem Humor, dass wir uns eher fragen sollten, ob in zwei Jahrhunderten überhaupt noch jemand da ist, um das Licht auszumachen. Während Geopolitik traditionell als Kampf um Territorien gedacht wird, verschiebt Gee den Fokus radikal: Das eigentliche Problem ist nicht der Platzmangel, sondern das Verschwinden der „Soldaten“ – und der Steuerzahler.

Die biologische „Revolution in Bewegung“
Gee beschreibt den Menschen als kosmischen Glücksritter. Genetisch schlechter ausgestattet als ein Schimpanse, hat Homo sapiens dennoch den Planeten dominiert – und ihn dabei an den Rand des Ruins gebracht. In Anlehnung an Jean-Clément Martins Begriff der Französischen Revolution als „révolution en mouvement“ erscheint auch die Menschheitsgeschichte als permanenter Aufbruch, der nun in einer Sackgasse endet.
Wie die Monarchie 1787 nicht mehr in der Lage war, ihre eigenen Widersprüche zu lösen, so steht auch die „Monarchie der Menschheit“ vor dem biologischen Aus: Wir zerstören die Grundlagen unseres eigenen Fortbestands mit bemerkenswerter Konsequenz.

Geopolitik des Verschwindens: Die „Große Angst“ 2.0
Wo die Französische Revolution von der „Grande Peur“ – der Angst vor imaginären Feinden – begleitet wurde, erleben wir heute eine neue Form der Panik: die Angst vor der schrumpfenden Bevölkerung. In rund fünfzig Jahren wird die Weltbevölkerung zu sinken beginnen – rasch und unumkehrbar.
Das ist geopolitischer Sprengstoff: Wer kontrolliert Ressourcen, wenn es an Menschen fehlt, um sie zu fördern, zu verarbeiten oder zu verteilen?

Unvernünftige Beharrlichkeit als globales Syndrom
Vielleicht ist der verzweifelte Versuch der Menschheit, an ihrem Status quo festzuhalten, nichts anderes als eine planetarische Form der „obstination déraisonnable“ – jener medizinethischen Kategorie, mit der Véronique Fournier das sinnlose Festhalten an lebensverlängernden Maßnahmen beschreibt.
Wir klammern uns an ein Wachstums- und Herrschaftsmodell, dessen biologisches Ablaufdatum längst überschritten ist.

Ein Siegel der Prophezeiung
So wie Pascal Buresi betont, dass der heutige Islam nicht mehr der der Ursprünge ist, macht Gee deutlich: Auch die Menschheit von heute ist nicht mehr die überlebensfähige Spezies von einst. Sinkende Fertilitätsraten entlarven Mauern, Waffen und klassische Machtpolitik als Anachronismen. Wenn es niemanden mehr gibt, der beherrscht werden kann, verliert Macht ihren Sinn.

Abflug in 200 Jahren
Gee gibt der Menschheit noch etwa zwei Jahrhunderte. Sein Vorschlag: Kooperation, Weitsicht – und der Sprung ins All. Keine revolutionären Säuberungen, sondern kollektive Intelligenz. Andernfalls droht uns ein globales Varennes: der gescheiterte Versuch, der Geschichte zu entkommen, bevor sie uns einholt.
Bewertung: ★★★★★

Ein petit traité de consolation für die gesamte Menschheit – ein Buch für alle, die über den Untergang lachen können, solange noch jemand da ist, der den Witz versteht.

Exkurs: Biologische Sackgasse und soziologische Inzucht
Ein Vergleich zwischen Henry Gees biologischer Diagnose und Stéphanie Grousset-Charrières Analyse der Harvard Final Clubs offenbart verblüffende Parallelen zwischen dem Überlebenskampf einer Spezies und der Selbsterhaltung einer Machtelite.
1. Mangelnde Diversität
* Biologisch: Die genetische Vielfalt der Menschheit ist geringer als die von Schimpansen – ein Risikofaktor für das Überleben.
* Soziologisch: Die Final Clubs reproduzieren eine homogene Elite, selektiert nach Habitus und Herkunft. Diese soziale „Inzucht“ schwächt langfristig ihre Anpassungsfähigkeit.
2. Entkoppelung und „Staat im Staate“
* Die Menschheit agiert wie eine biologische Monarchie, die ihre eigenen Probleme nicht mehr lösen kann.
* Die Elite kapselt sich ab, schützt sich durch Geheimhaltung und verliert dadurch Legitimität und gesellschaftliche Funktion.
3. Das Reproduktionsparadox
* Biologisch: Der Erfolg der Menschheit erzeugt die Bedingungen ihres Niedergangs.
* Soziologisch: Lebenslange Netzwerke sichern Macht, verhindern aber notwendige Öffnung und Wandel – eine weitere Form unvernünftiger Beharrlichkeit.

Zusammenarbeit als letzter Ausweg
Während Henry Gee für das Überleben der Menschheit Kooperation fordert, gilt für Eliten dasselbe Prinzip: Wer sich ausschließlich über Ausschluss definiert, steuert auf sein eigenes Varennes zu. Biologisches Überleben verlangt Öffnung – und soziologische Relevanz ebenso.

[Heather]

Well, this wasn’t exactly an uplifting read, but I suppose it wasn’t meant to be. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire paints a grim picture of our future, arguing that despite the Green Revolution of the 1960s, humanity is on a slow but inevitable path to extinction within 10,000 years—unless we act within the next two decades.

Gee lays out factors driving this decline, from plummeting sperm counts to economic instability leading people to have fewer children. He also highlights threats like reliance on singleton crops, mass migration sparking conflict, and even the effects of women's rights and increased access to education on population trends (a point sure to spark debate). While some arguments felt more compelling than others, the overall message was clear: if we don’t act soon, we may be sealing our own fate.

His proposed solutions are just as bold as his warnings. He argues that we need to stop eating meat entirely, eat plants directly instead of filtering them through animals, develop artificial photosynthesis, convert waste into food, and colonize space to ensure humanity’s survival. While I learned a lot about human genetics and the Founder Effect, devoting an entire chapter to photosynthesis felt excessive, and at times, he was a bit repetitive in making his points. Some arguments could have been more concise without losing their impact.

One of the most surprising takeaways was that our global population is now declining. While that might sound positive, Gee argues that it takes billions of people to produce the next Einstein or Newton—the minds that propel humanity forward. A shrinking population, he suggests, may stall our progress.

Though bleak, the book was undeniably thought-provoking. Whether you find it alarmist or a necessary wake-up call, The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire is a fascinating, if unsettling, look at our species' potential downfall.

ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Drew]

I don’t seem to get on well with pop science. I heard the author on David Runciman’s podcast, and intrigued by his hypothesis, bought the book. A few chapters in I was confronted with my usual dislike of the way that a certain kind of scientist tries to write for a wider public: not exactly patronizing, but also not the tone that they would use when addressing their academic peers.
I may not have a doctorate in any of the sciences, but neither do I need to be spoken to as if the only way you can keep my attention is by writing in a lightweight, jokey way. Rather than reinforcing the message or adding substance to the argument, this merely distracts from what Henry G is trying to tell us, namely, that the forces of evolution and natural selection will ultimately lead to the extinction of homo sapien sapiens just as it has done for every other species thrown up by nature.
This isn’t perhaps a particularly new revelation, but the initial argument is interesting in that it puts a finger on the moment that the rot set in, and that’s not where one might suspect. Rather, in the authors telling, it was the moment at which our species came to dominate over and eliminate all other surviving humans, such as the Neanderthals, Denisovans and others.
This genially pessimistic thesis is a great starting point for an “all downhill from here” narrative but Mr Gee squanders his early advantage with his lightweight, bantering tone, weak argumentation and a final speculative leap into space that was remarkable only to the extent that I could barely believe he spent more than an afternoon or two of online research to come up with his conclusion.
I also have to wonder why the demise of humanity should really be seen as a problem that needs to be solved. Given what we’ve been up to in the last 10,000 years I’m really not sure we deserve another 10,000 anyway. Thoughts?

[Neil Fox]

Henry Gee’s central thesis is that Homo Sapiens is destined for ultimate extinction, that we are living on borrowed time on the verge of collapse (relatively speaking, of course; our extinction will occur in the next 10,000 years or so) and that Homo sapiens will wink out of existence much as the Neanderthals did before us. He then theorizes that we have a narrow window of opportunity to avoid this fate.

Gee argues that human population is on the cusp of a steep decline. World population will go into reverse sometime toward the end of this century after first continuing to grow albeit at a declining rate of growth, and in the process further placing unsustainable pressure on our planet’s resources as it does.

He presents a sort of anti-Malthusian scenario, driven by factors such as the emancipation of women (ie: fewer babies), mysteriously falling sperm counts and certain genetic factors. Gee is not alone in his beliefs - a certain Elon Musk is apparently obsessed with population decline - and his his remedies to avoid this fate are bordering on the ludicrous. He advocates taking control of photosynthesis to spark a new ‘green revolution’ in food productivity, and the colonization of space, including living in, erm, hollowed out meteors. Right. These are wishy washy things at best, with echoes of Yuval Noah Harari’s writings that mankind will save itself by re-engineering ourselves into a Godlike form of superhuman immortals. Gee though simply doesn’t have the intellectual power or punch of Harari; this has the feeling of a book-length essay to it. He fails to dwell on what could make us extinct even quicker- catastrophic climate events, a new deadly pandemic, nuclear Armageddon, AI run amok or some other technological calamity.

[Lissa00]

I thought the first half of this book was stronger than the second. I don’t think this book sold me on the decrease in population necessitating a move to living in space. This is well written and interesting but I don’t feel sold on space colonization being the best option to solve the problem of population decline. I received a complimentary digital copy of this book through NetGalley.

[Gus]

A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters was my favorite science read in 2023. It was brilliantly written; concise enough not to make you feel like you're reading a textbook and wonderfully paced, building up to a poetic conclusion: the end of all life on earth, a billion years from now.

Naturally, I was excited when I saw Henry Gee had just published a new book, this time about the extinction of our species. However, it was a disappointing read. I think the author overshot his mark. The book feels unfocused and like there was not enough content (This was made evident to me at the end when he mentions that the book was born out of an article he wrote).

The main thesis of the book is that, from a biological point of view, once a species dominates its ecosystem or becomes too successful, it is fated to extinction. This naturally applies to us. We're currently at an inflexion point: the only way to guarantee our existence is to colonize space, and, as the birth rates keep falling all across the world, we only have a small window of time in which there's still enough humans that could make this future possible, before our population size sharply declines. The reason being that such a level of innovation can only happen with high population sizes.

The problem is, I don't buy his conclusion. The foundations are solid: humans have so little genetic variety compared to our ape cousins that we are one virus or bacteria away from the next pandemic that could wipe out half of our species. We depend on such a handful of crops (wheat, rice, maize, etc.) that, again, we're a couple of crop diseases away from a global famine. And then there's climate change.

Concluding, however, that the only option left is to go to space, when we are not even able to live on an underwater colony, is to indulge in the out-of-touch, misanthropic escape fantasies of the hyper-rich.

The elephant in the room is --who would've thought-- capitalism. There is not a single mention of the economic forces and the powers at play driving the demise of our planet. Unlike his previous book, you can't really talk about the possibility of our extinction without getting into the politics that shape our lives. This is the book's fatal flaw. It could have used a co-author to complement this part.

It was still a decent read: I learned quite a few things, but the pace is all over the place. The book abruptly ends just when it starts talking about space, and this is the point it's building up to. There are also a few of mentions of Jared Diamond, including the already debunked, oft-repeated theory that the Rapa Nui destroyed their habitat due to their short-sightedness. This casts more doubt on the quality of the author's research.

To summarize, it's a book with great bits of knowledge, but take its conclusion with a grain of salt. It feels tone-deaf for the times we live in.

There is no planet B.

[Rob Sedgwick]

This is a rather downbeat book that argues that declining populations at the end of the century will see us pass our peak as a species, decline, and eventually go extinct in the far future. Writing about the future always produces a giggle when it actually arrives, as it is usually way off the mark (e.g. Ehrlich's oft-cited The Population Bomb, which is often mentioned in these pages).

This book's basic premise is that a relatively small genetic "founder" pool left humans vulnerable to being eradicated. We are all supposedly descended from a very small group of Africans, with some minimal interbreeding with other types of human, now extinct. Our "peak" was just before the invention of agriculture - it's been downhill ever since.

The author makes much of how extinction is "normal" and over 99% of all time species are now extinct. There are so many of us, though, that even if 99.9% of us died, there would still be 8 million people left, far more than most other mammals. Total extinction is hard to imagine, even if we were reduced to a small number of individuals (who would be able to happily breed away). We are also unique in being aware that we even are a species that can become extinct, which leads us to the second part of the book - human ingenuity.

Here, the tone shifts. The author unsurprisingly looks towards space as a way of arresting our otherwise imminent decline. Space will be a tough nut to crack, but it's inevitable in the aeons left to however many of us there are at any one time. Even if civilisation ends, there's plenty of time and resources to begin again, maybe many times over. So I am not sure I agree with the book's thesis, and given the inevitability of people living elsewhere in the solar system and beyond, I don't really see the solution to "his" problem as a solution - just something that would happen anyway. Give it a few centuries, and we'll see who is right.

[Jenn]

In The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire, author Henry Gee explores humanity's evolutionary rise and the factors contributing to its potential downfall. Drawing on both human evolution and examples of past extinctions, Gee builds a compelling case that our species is on a path toward extinction. He also outlines possible actions we could take to change course, though these are not explored in as much depth as I hoped.

As someone who enjoys paleontology more than anthropology, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging I found the archaeological and historical elements of the book. Gee presents a fascinating look at the traits and circumstances that led to humanity's dominance—many of which, ironically, now threaten our survival. I found the statistical analysis behind his estimated timeline for humanity's decline particularly compelling. However, I would have appreciated a more thorough discussion of the solutions he proposes to avert this outcome.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in a short but interesting look at humanity, with a dire warning that isn't overly negative.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the copy of the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Caroline]

Thought-provoking book which is written in a very entertaining way. Some of the points made are really interesting (eg how genetically universe the Homo Sapiens is and the problems that leads to with illnesses etc).

I thought the suggested solutions were a bit thin especially the idea that colonising space is the answer as presumably that would take up lots of the Earth's resources which humans are already over- exploiting.

I'm also not sold on the dire warnings of population decline partly as fewer people would reduce pressure on the Earth's resources which might then reduce the decline.

[Giuseppe Rinaldi]

Highlights some genuinely thought-provoking themes, scattering interesting facts and speculative scenarios throughout. However, the narrative often resembles a sequence of loosely connected ideas rather than a sustained argument. At best, the book reads like a compressed summary of arguments made more compelling elsewhere, and it ultimately suffers from a lack of depth and originality.

[Sg Perry]

A book in 3 parts. Thought the first part - Rise - was excellent. This was about where we came from, Africa. Neanderthals and so on.

Part 2 was so so. About the rise of agriculture, population growth, viruses etc.

Part 3 was a bit too futuristic for my liking. But maybe he's right, guess we'll know one day.

[Sarah Bates]

Heavens. A bit clunky - and how does the space exploration bit fit in to the argument?

[Zoe]

Quite duplicative across the three sections. At times, overly technical (e.g. photosynthesis systems) and over reliance on space travel/existence as the resolution to prevent extinction.

[Stefano Pettarin]

Parlare di previsioni su quella che sarà il destino dell'umanità è molto pericoloso come essere un mangiafuoco quando non lo sei
Tuttavia l'autore in maniera molto discorsiva e neanche prolissa è riuscito a raggruppare perfettamente in tre grandi capitoli quello che potrebbe essere secondo lui il destino della nostra specie

[Meg]

Though the outlook for our species is bleak, this book at least helped me to not feel so bad about my own infertility. On a personal level it sucks, but within a bigger picture, it seems to be a pretty natural feature of our species' demise. So goes the world.

[Kara]

A compelling look at the history of ancient humans up through modern homo sapiens, who Gee argues are on a path to extinction (in the next 10,000 years) unless we find a way to our next frontier, space.

Thank you to Macmillan for an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

[Carlo]

I found the book overall quite interesting. It covers a wide range of topics, many genuinely thought-provoking, and offers a decent amount to learn. That said, it suffers from a serious flaw: repetition. The author tends to recycle the same points from chapter to chapter, which means the book could easily be shorter, more direct, and more impactful without losing anything of value.
Despite this, the concept is compelling. It’s a good overview of the different human species and hominids that have existed, and how (and why) they’ve evolved and disappeared over time.
The most striking takeaway for me is the author’s argument that what set Homo sapiens apart wasn’t superior intelligence, but population size. When populations are too small, technology and knowledge can vanish; skills must be reinvented over and over before they finally take root.
But my favorite part came at the very end, where the author briefly invites us to consider humanity’s future in space. Sadly, this section was just an afterthought; I wish far more space had been devoted to it. The idea that humans have been preparing for space life since the very beginning is fascinating. For centuries (in the last one more than before), we’ve been building environments, houses, offices, cities, that insulate us from nature, controlling temperature, light, and air. In a way, we’re already practising for living on another planet.
Yet this thought brings a darker question: what happens to humanity if we completely sever ourselves from nature? Already, city people can be anxious about insects, dirt, or wilderness, feeling uncomfortable or even unsafe in the natural world. If we extend that trajectory, living only in enclosed, artificial spaces, perhaps on a spaceship, what will humans be? What purpose will we serve if our connection to nature, and even our biological roles, are stripped away?
The book touches on one unsettling idea: that pregnancy might not be viable in space, which could lead to artificial gestation outside the human body. This would be an extreme step in the dehumanization of humanity, removing one of our most fundamental natural functions. If robots run the ship and machines provide everything we need, will humans be reduced to doing small, token tasks and distracting themselves with entertainment? In such a future, why even keep humans alive at all?
This leaves me pondering a question: if humanity is completely detached from nature - our origin and our context - what is our role, and what is our purpose?

[Anna]

interesting bits about history, but wtf with the wet dreams of colonizing space with humans… that dragged the rating down by at least 2 stars

[Dan]

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this book that looks at the how the human race made it to the top as a species, the problems that humans are facing and how these lead to our inevitable extinction.

Something humans have a hard time admitting to themselves and others, besides being wrong, is that everything ends. This review, the book being reviewed, the reader the author, everyone we know, or will ever know. At some point they will be gone,as will the whole of humanity. In many ways we seem to be in a race to end it all, with a feeling that something better awaits on the other side of the veil. I have my doubts, but I have always had a sense of my own mortality. Everything ends, that's a universal truth. How soon that happens might just be up to us, and the way things are going right now, that end might be zipping fast. However as the author points out, there are things we can start doing, though again looking at the state of the world, co-operation seems the furthest from anyone's mind. The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire: Why Our Species Is on the Edge of Extinction by Henry Gee is a look at how humans defied the numerous odds and made it to the pinnacle of power on Earth, how what goes up must come down, and what we might be able to do to delay the end, or even expand the reach of humanity to the stars.

The book begins with of course the dinosaurs. There were numerous ideas on why the dinosaurs went extinct, theories that covered a whole lot of bases. Some thought the eggs of dinosaurs were too soft to protect the babies, or became too hard to babies to get out of. Maybe mammals ate the eggs. Or even a plague or galactic event, say something from the sky. What became apparent, was that many species had risen to the top and eventually went extinct. Gee looks at these reasons and shows where humans nearly didn't make it, and how these events helped or hindered the growth of humans. Gee looks at the problems facing humans today, and points climate change that will force migration as areas become too hot, or too underwater to support life. More importantly Gee discusses the fact that people are not having children, either by choice, or by fertility problems. This will cause problems for a lot of countries, as population age out of existence, and no one will be there to do the work needed to keep GDP up, or to advance technology. Especially in these days of racial discrimination. Gee posits a few ideas, changes in how we farm and produce food, worldwide female emancipation, something the Internet trolls won't like, and of course space being the place where humans might have to go.

A book that is full of so much information, however all told in a way that is not a lecture or a droneing teacher, but told in a conversational style. There is a lot here that will spark a few, actually many spirited conversations. And saying that space and life on Mars might help humans seems a little tech bro solution to ignoring problems on Earth. However Gee states his case quite well, and makes a very good argument. I just think that humans have regressed in many ways in their attitudes towards women and minorities, and don't see how in this current environment any of this could gain traction. The book is well-written, and well-thought out, with a good mix of hard science, with plenty of explanation. And a lot of hope.

As I stated a book that a lot of people won't like, it talks about female rights, climate change, and evolution. I found this quite engaging, and learned quite a bit about the way humans adapted to things, and found myself almost rooting for humanity to keep going. Something I have not felt in a while. Definitely a conversation starter, and a book that will be of interest to a lot of people.

[Toby Martin]

When it comes to such a heavy and all-encompassing topic as this, you can’t do much better than a palaeontologist. Palaeontology puts us and our world into perspective, and what made Henry Gee’s approach work here I think was the fact that, having such a wide scope of the history of life through Deep Time, he avoided coming at this as a fatalistic misanthrope. He was reflective, matter-of-fact, conversational, but still made very poignant and sobering points - the book was also divided up nicely so we knew what we were getting in particular sections and chapters and from the beginning had the shape of where the book was going without being just left with a bad taste in the mouth.

The only real issues I think reflect that this book was not an especially long one, and therefore some detail that would have improved sections was absent. It may be that Gee saw his role as just looking at trends within the broadest scope of life history - he admits in the afterword that this originated as an essay he was persuaded to put a more ‘Hollywood’ ending onto, but this admission is a little jarring to come right at the end, and in any case, even though there could have been more to say, the third section of the book that discusses the potential ways humanity might avoid extinction within the next 10,000 years didn’t feel tacked on at all, but as carefully thought out as the rest of the book. The message therefore ends up feeling slightly mixed, and this is not helped by certain details being brushed over. This is frustrating because Gee is clearly not coming at this issue as an ideologue with an ill-thought-out political agenda. For example, when talking about the decline of population growth, he acknowledges the difficulty of legislating against it, looks for multiple causes and nuances, and doesn’t blame women for making their own reproductive choices like a manospherian would - indeed, he even states that the engagement of women in the major issues of the future will make population downturn easier and ‘more civilised’, but doesn’t really elaborate on why. It’s kind of implied in the following chapters that this will simply be that, with more of the human population educated and independent, there are more brains and hands to work on the necessary solutions. I suppose that, with the various topics our attention is being drawn too, Gee is relying a lot on his various citations for further reading on our part - for that, a more detailed bibliography and ‘further reading’ section would have been welcomed, but we are at least signposted to a degree.

The better side of the sometimes skirted detail is that where Gee does introduce the reader to a topic, he explains it in a nicely simplified way so that the threads can be connected. I got a much better understanding of photosynthesis and plant metabolism from this book than I ever had before (or expected!), and, in a book whose title can come off as gloomy and pessimistic, I’m also glad that many a reader could be introduced to the Green Revolution through Gee’s explanation of it, because it is an absolutely vital part of the history of our ingenuity, and, in my view, one our species’ greatest successes on par with the development of vaccines.

My hope then is that anyone nervous about the future and drawn to this highly accessible book will be encouraged to do further reading and investigation into what they can do to improve things, help get things moving, or whatever else. Though the formatting and the tone isn’t always consistent, for the most part, this is a very important book.