The decisive factor contributing to human ascendency from tree-dwelling, shadow-hiding primates into the dominant species on the planet is our unique ability to encode thought into a set of symbols for future reference rather than being slaves to the instincts encoded in our DNA. Writing and reading are human superpowers. They bestow upon us the ability to learn from people we will never meet including the thoughts of humans who died in Sumeria five thousand years before I emerged onto the world stage. The superpower allows us to learn from the 400 unique Sumerian literary compositions and the billions upon billions of texts dutifully recorded in a multitude of languages, some of which have evaporated into nothingness.

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