What Makes Homo Truly Sapiens?: Notes on Human Exceptionalism and Existentialism

My essay today is a critique of humanity—of our species, Homo sapiens, as a collective.

This reflection has been long in the making. For years, I dismissed these thoughts as maybe just a passing phase, born out of the eccentricity of my then adolescent mind, perhaps even a product of overthinking. I assumed that, with time, fresh perspectives would shift them into something more charitable. Yet, the resentment and frustrations I held for ourselves only deepened in ways that bypass the rational mind and lingers beneath attempts at optimism. Here’s what I think: I am not proud to be human.

What, exactly, makes Homo… sapiens?

To begin our study on how I arrived at such disenchanted viewpoint, I find it necessary to begin unlayering the perspective at the lens of our most fundamental level: the cell.

For much of our history, we have taken pride in regarding ourselves the superior species on Earth. An entitlement grounded seemingly in our faculty to structure our thoughts through abstraction and logic, therefore, sapiens = wise. Our superior cognitive fitness has afforded us to successfully navigate, adapt, and ultimately dominate nearly every environment we encounter, despite the constant threat to survival. All thanks to our “big” brains, literally. And by extension, it’s most basic functional unit, the neurons.

It is important to point out that our brain is basically a primate brain¹. What specifically distinguishes it, is that we have the highest number of cortical neurons of any primate. Cortical neurons are what allows our higher-order cognition like problem-solving, critical thinking, decision making, and creativity. Purportedly, humans have roughly 16 billion against the 9 billion in gorillas and orangutans, and the 6 to 7 billion in chimpanzees (our closest relative in the animal kingdom). It is remarkable, but it is not exceptional, says neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel^2,3,4. Dr. Herculano-Houzel is an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who has worked extensively on challenging neuromyths and was the first one to successfully address this standing question in neurobiology. She provided the most definitive estimate, to date, of the number of neurons in the entire human brain—approximately 86 billion⁵. This was determined by mushing brain tissue into a uniform solution (what she calls a "brain soup”) and counting the number of cell nuclei in a special fluorescent technique to make the nuclei glow, according to their landmark paper published in 2009 which remains relevant to this date. The results appear in the Journal of Comparative Neurology⁵.

The number of neurons is only one part of the criteria how scientists measure the best fit between brain traits and degrees of intelligence, there is also neuron packing density, interneuronal distance, and axonal conduction velocity. Big words, but these are just the factors that in combination determine general information processing capacity, or IPC⁶. The highest IPC is found in humans.

To achieve such an elaborate circuitry, numerous theories have been proposed to answer one of philosophy and neuroscience’s age-old questions: what is the biological origin of human intelligence? Among the most widely acknowledged theories, and arguably the most convenient, is the Cooking Hypothesis^3,7,8,9. This hypothesis suggests that a key turning point in human evolution was the simple mastery of a single, powerful tool: fire^7,9,10. Early humans relied on raw, hunter-gatherer diets which limited their daily energy intake (calories). Under these constraints, energy had to be allocated—supporting either a larger body or a larger brain, but not both¹¹. As a result, early hominins had bigger bodies but relatively smaller brains. The shift to a cooked-food diet, likely first adopted by Homo erectus¹¹, changed this balance. Cooking increased the energy available from food, freeing up extra calories that could now support both body growth and brain expansion¹². This process contributed to encephalization, i.e., the increase in brain size relative to body size, which characterizes modern-day humans.

Image credit: Journal of Bioanalysis & Biomedicine

Unlike extra-oral food processing techniques (such as pounding or grinding) practiced by hunter-gatherers, cooking alters food both physically and chemically. It breaks it down into its basic macronutrient components: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, making them easier to digest¹². For instance, proteins in raw meat are molecularly tightly folded. Heat denatures these structures, allowing enzymes to access and break them down more efficiently into its bioavailable forms once it reaches the gut. The result is a higher net energy gain per meal.

This surplus energy had far-reaching consequences. With less time needed for foraging and digestion, early humans could allocate more effort to social organization, tool use, and environmental adaptation^11,12. Over time, this shift paved the way for the evolutionary transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. While Homo erectus showed early signs of intelligence, its cognitive development was constrained by its dietetic restraints. The subsequent adoption of cooking removed that constraint, enabling the trajectory of its descendants, us, to sustain further increases in brain size and function^1,4,8,11,13. This newly acquired advantage allowed us to cascade rapidly from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture to industry to computers to AI.

However, its popularity invites scrutiny, as several authors challenged^14,15. Still, main proponents of the hypothesis, such as primatologist Richard Wrangham and Suzana Herculano-Houzel herself emphasize that the control of fire, particularly in the context of cooking, likely shaped the trajectory of human life-history, its social behavior, and evolutionary psychology. These ideas are explored in their books Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009)⁸ and The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable (2016)¹⁶, respectively. Finally, to come back to the question: What, exactly, makes Homo… sapiens? A simplistic answer: we have more neurons in the cerebral cortex than any other animal—and we got them because we cook. No other animal cooks its food. Only humans do. And that’s how we got to become human.

But for all the brilliance that comes with our complex neurobiological architecture and its success in the evolutionary lottery, still, I’m rather convinced that intelligence is an overrated adaptive trait.

Beyond big brains and toward the audacity of “sapiens”

Here’s an example to consider: Dinosaurs weren’t very smart, yet they have thrived for over a hundred million years.

This underscores a point that is often obscured in human self-appraisal: intelligence is but just one trait that nature stores in its large complex toolkit for ecological success¹⁷. Long-term persistence arises from sustained ecological fit across shifting environments, even in the absence of exceptional intelligence. Which then posits that biological success is better understood not as a function of intellect alone, but as the capacity to maintain functional resilience under constant environmental change.

We have paleontological records to suggest that nonavian dinosaurs lived for roughly 165 million years, spanning across three successive geologic periods: the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous¹⁸. This extraordinary duration of their dominance was, in fact, not primarily contingent on high-level cognition. Across most dinosaur groups, encephalization remained modest, yet they achieved extensive diversification, ecological dominance, and long-term stability on a planetary scale. By contrast, anthropological¹⁹ and concurrent paleogenomic²⁰ evidence places Homo sapiens at approximately 300,000 years old—a very brief moment in geological time. And yet, within this narrow interval, our intelligence has far reached a point where we have developed technologies with unprecedented capacity for total, widespread, self-annihilation. The biologist Edward Wilson and similarly author Toby Ord in his book The Precipice (2020)²¹, noted that humanity is endowed with “Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” A rather chilling combination.

Only in the past few millennia, shaped by strands of classical philosophy, Christian theology and Enlightenment rationalism, did we begin to see ourselves as fundamentally distinct from the rest of life: set apart by reason, language, and the supposed possession of a soul²². For many, this ascendancy is further reinforced by the belief that we were created in the likeness of God, an origin that confers not just uniqueness, but intrinsic worth and authority over the natural world. A powerful narrative that casts us not as part of nature, but as its masters and stewards in equal measure. Humanity as simultaneously within nature and above it. But what remains when belief, and even disbelief, are gone?

Philosophy tried to bring stability to this uncertainty. Hegel and Marx attempted to fill the void with systems of progress moving toward resolution, while Kant grounded meaning in human reason. All assume that the world can be understood well enough to be guided. But when reality becomes unpredictable, the sense of control weakens—and our thinking shifts. We rely more on fast, survival-driven responses. What we then follow is less of reason or intellect anymore, and regress to our most primitive trait: instincts and fear. To cope, we simplify: “what we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as wrong or evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.” When this pattern goes beyond individuals to societies, it turns cataclysmic.

Do we really deserve our title “sapiens?”

How has our species, in its 300,000 years of intellectual supremacy, contributed to planetary preservation? Has our footprints equal a net positive impact? I think not.

Try to feel the world around you. Across regions, conflicts are no longer isolated but form an interconnected system of escalating rivalries shaping the contours of global economics, politics, stability and security: In Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine reflects broader efforts to challenge Western influence²³; growing strategic interest of the US on Greenland and the Arctic fractures long-standing transatlantic alliance between the Netherlands and NATO²⁴. In Asia, the US and China continue to compete for Indo-Pacific dominance amid tensions over Taiwan, drawing in regional actors like Japan²⁵. Meanwhile, China and India maintain a fragile, nuclear-tinged border standoff²⁶. Notably, the Middle East now serves as the most volatile convergence point, where a full-scale war involving the US, Israel, and Iran has expanded into a wider regional conflict spilling well over the Gulf states²⁷, further entangling the Israel–Palestine crisis²⁸. Israel has further escalated tensions in the region by expanding its “security buffer zone” into southern Lebanon, in a bid to safeguard against invasion²⁹; and Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels have joined the fold by launching missile strikes towards Israel³⁰. In the Americas, earlier this year the US has already crossed into direct military action with Venezuela, launching airstrikes and capturing its sitting president³¹; this besides US’ long-standing frictions with Cuba³². In Africa, South Sudan is sliding back toward civil war³³, while much of East Africa and the Horn of Africa is under threat from ongoing conflicts and the rising risk of renewed confrontation between Ethiopia and Eritrea³⁴. And conflicts close to home, China continuing maritime expansion and coercive activity over the West Philippine Sea³⁵. Deciding what will ultimately conclude from all these is left to the bottom-line calculus.

This is where I begin to lose confidence to our humanity; in our inherent tendencies for hate, discrimination, greed, and inflated self-importance. It is a perpetual recurring theme in our “long” history as a species. By 1972, the need for coordinated global action was already clear³⁶. Yet half a century later, the continued failure of international institutions—of humanity as a collective—to act on those warnings doesn’t really inspire confidence. If anything, it signals a persistent inability to respond to long-identified risks, and thus far bodes badly for meaningful change to happen. That outlook worsens when set against recent events: the pandemic, ongoing financial instability, escalating environmental disasters, active conflicts, and deepening political divisions, all of which further reduce the likelihood of a unified global response. In practice, priorities remain misaligned: more is spent on improving weaponry than in preserving the living conditions for all life.

And that is why I feel no pride in being human. We possess the superior cognitive tools for foresight—to reflect, to exercise restraint, to anticipate consequences. Yet we choose differently every time. There is a dissonance between what we know and how we act, and it is within this gap that much of my resentment resides. In our hubris, we’re becoming less and less of a Homo sapiens (wise man), and more and more a Homo deus (God-human).

Concluding remarks