Why Do We Always Want More?

The well-fed lion sleeps. The well-fed human builds a granary.

For three hundred thousand years, our ancestors chipped flint by the riverbank. Then, in a handful of millennia, they raised temples, invented writing, split the atom and left their own planet. Same body. Same brain. So what flipped the switch?

The Sumerians, the people who lit the fuse of civilization, gave a startling answer: humankind was shaped by a being called Enki, who entrusted us with a share of his wisdom. What if that four-thousand-year-old story held the key to our insatiable hunger?

From the birth of Sumer to the frontiers of genetics, from the physics of information to the neuroscience of consciousness, Pouya Nosrati leads a gripping investigation into:

• why your brain is wired for the chase, not for satisfaction;
• what hides in the 98% of our DNA we barely understand;
• why the universe looks more and more like an ocean of information;
• what the clay tablets really say about Enki, Enlil and the Flood;
• how to take back control of your emotions, your instincts and your own hunger, with a method that fits on a single page.

One rare pact runs through every page: keep what we know apart from what the author believes. The facts are sourced (Nature, Science, the Max Planck Institute, NASA). The hypotheses are always clearly flagged, the moment the author steps off solid ground. At every moment, you know exactly where you stand.

No guru. No conspiracy. A book for readers who refuse ready-made answers and want to see our endless drive for more in a new light.

Free with the book: the visual map, twenty-six illustrated plates that sum up the whole investigation.