When it is still too early to say whether it will reach the proportions of the Big Five, it becomes known as the Sixth Extinction. In what seems like a fantastic coincidence, but is probably no coincidence at all, the history of these events is recovered just as people come to realize that they are causing another one. Five of these ancient events were catastrophic enough that they’re put in their own category: the so-called Big Five. Very, very occasionally in the distant past, the planet has undergone change so wrenching that the diversity of life has plummeted. No creature has ever altered life on the planet in this way before, and yet other, comparable events have occurred.

They interbreed with these creatures and then, by one means or another, kill them off. On reaching Europe, they encounter creatures very much like themselves, but stockier and probably brawnier, who have been living on the continent far longer. Everywhere they settle, they adapt and innovate. In coastal regions, they gather shellfish farther inland, they hunt mammals. They cross rivers, plateaus, mountain ranges. None of the usual constraints of habitat or geography seem to check them. Gradually they push into regions with different climates, different predators, and different prey. They are, however, singularly resourceful. The members of the species are not particularly swift or strong or fertile. Slowly its population grows, but quite possibly then it contracts again-some would claim nearly fatally-to just a few thousand pairs.

Its numbers are small, and its range restricted to a slice of eastern Africa. The species does not yet have a name-nothing does-but it has the capacity to name things.Īs with any young species, this one’s position is precarious. So it is with this story, which starts with the emergence of a new species maybe two hundred thousand years ago.

Prologueīeginnings, it’s said, are apt to be shadowy.

Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction, Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction is a multi-disciplinary exploration of the next, and most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

The 6th extinction book