This article is collected by Prof Ilchi Lee from his book. In this he said as human beings strengthened their claim to the top spot, our relationship to Earth became ever more fragile and anxiety-ridden. In an ever-increasing attempt to secure our living conditions, we utilized non-sustainable and non-justifiable (except for greed) methods of mining the environment, methods which have led to scarcity and barrenness. As a result, we have come to this point at which we not only threaten Earth but also our own survival. If we don’t overcome the challenge of survival facing us, we will have existed only for about 50,000 years as a recognizable species, which, compared to the estimated five billion years of Earth’s life span, is not even as long as the blink of an eye.

Although natural evolution is a field still marked by unanswered and unanswerable questions, two questions are generally thought to be foremost in the field: What caused the quick demise of the dinosaurs, and what caused the meteoric rise of Homo sapiens as the dominant presence on Earth?

Although scientists have found fossilized bones of our presumed ancestors dating back some three million years, it is still subject to debate whether we descended from these ancestors. We have yet to find the missing link. All we know for sure is that Homo sapiens, after maintaining a quiet presence for most of the three million years, began a rapid upwards climb about 50,000 years ago, showing amazing intellectual and creative progress with the beginning of the Neolithic Age 15,000 years ago. It was almost as if human beings made a great leap forward—no, a gigantic leap forward—in terms of intellectual abilities.

Why did the dinosaurs suddenly disappear and human beings emerge, among all the species, as masters of an intellect that has since advanced enough to now threaten the entire Earth? Although scientific inquiry will take some time to complete, if it ever is completed, I have done some creative thinking of my own and drafted a plausible scenario to answer these questions. Bear with me as we embark on a fun journey of “what-if”.