Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of intimately known individuals. They cannot, for example, execute the queen and establish a republic. If a beehive is facing a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot reinvent their social system overnight in order to cope better.
Ants and bees can also work together in large numbers, but they do so in a very rigid way. Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. The real difference between us and other animals is on the collective level. If you place me and a chimpanzee together on a lone island, to see who survives better, I would definitely place my bets on the chimp. But the fact is that one-on-one, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees.
We want to believe that there is something special about the human body or human brain that makes each individual human vastly superior to a dog, or a pig, or a chimpanzee. We often look for the difference between us and other animals on the individual level. How did we reach from there to here? What was our secret of success, that turned us from insignificant apes minding their own business in a corner of Africa, into the rulers of the world? Today, however, humans control this planet. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. The reason is not what you might expect.ħ0,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. History professor Yuval Noah Harari - author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind - explains why humans have dominated Earth.