Illustration by Facundo Belgradi.

What makes a homo human?

We used to think tools made the distinction between whatever homo and homo sapiens, so we decided Lucy was the first human. But then we realized that many animals, not just primates but some birds and beavers and stuff, use tools, too. Home Depot became instantly less sexy and anthropologists became instantly more weary. What, then, makes us human? What, then, makes us special?

Because us humans, we love to feel special.

Two plausible answers to that questions surfaced. Maybe what makes us human is cooperation. Maybe what makes us human is art.

Cooperation is very inefficient.

In general, animals don’t cooperate to the point of taking care of the sick or weak: that’s very inefficient and nature is very efficient. One theory posits that a homo remains that has a broken and healed leg is the first human remains, since it’s proof of cooperation.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said that the first sign of civilization was a healed human femur found in an ancient cave. In nature, a broken leg means certain death. But this one healed —proof someone stopped, stayed, and nursed another back to life. Cooperation, not conquest, is the first leap.

As inefficient as cooperation is, it’s one of the things that makes us resilient as a species. Because we cooperate and help our weak and ill, we are diverse. Because we are diverse, we can adapt to different circumstances, climates and environments.

Art is very unproductive.

What was going on that first homo’s head when they drew on that cave? When they sung that first song? Maybe grief. Maybe joy.

Maybe love.

Definitely not productivity.

The oldest known art is a series of ochre cross-hatchings and handprints, found in Blombos Cave, South Africa, and on walls in Indonesia and Spain (cave art ~73000 BP, Blombos; handprints ~40000 BP). The why is unknown: it wasn’t for food, or shelter, or profit. It was for presence, memory, magic, or play.

Cathedrals are inefficient, unproductive, wasteful. So are carpets, and poems, and opera.

Love is foolish and wasteful.

As are books. As is ethics. As is philosophy.

Loving you is foolish and wasteful and beautiful. Like you are foolish and wasteful and beautiful.

Sports. Children’s play. Chess. Mona Lisa. The Pyramids. The Parthenon.

Inefficient. Unproductive. Wasteful.

Shelter ends once the cave is dry: every additional design decision broadcasts values. Shelter ends once the cave is dry: everything after is theater, every design a vote for a value, a vision, or a story. Shelter ends where architecture begins. Even the efficiency boxes in US suburbia are coded with societal values: efficiency, conformity and uniformity over beauty and individuality.

Animals are efficient. Machines are productive. Humankind is wasteful.

Once humans move from the jungle, from the ecosystem, into their artificial shelter clusters a.k.a. villages/towns/cities, nature’s efficiency goes out of the window. The poop doesn’t recycle itself. Cultural objects don’t compost so easily, especially away from green density. Ecological terraforming, agriculture and hunting disrupt delicate systems of climate, flora and fauna. And though terraforming, agriculture and hunting end up being leap-level improvements in efficiency and productivity, they start as play, as tinkering, as observation.

They start as a mistake.

They start as art.

Foresight is science. Strategy is culture. Art is a mistake.

Machines are productive. Nature is efficient. Humans are wasteful.

This is my theory of waste as the defining human trait. Call it play. Call it curiosity. Call it creativity. Call it destructiveness. Call it war.

Call it love.

Call it theory of beautiful mistakes.

Call it theory of culture as waste.

Wasteful cooperation and wasteful art are the real drivers of humanity. They make us leap into culture through play. This is what most evolutionary theorists, economists, and so-called socialist cultural critics miss. They want humans to be efficient and productive, but what makes us endure and leap is our inefficiency: our surplus, our playfulness, our willingness to squander, to risk, to care, to build cathedrals, to go to space, and to draw bison and to love someone for no reason.