This Big History book contains a short description of human nature, human worth, and human civilization, including the origins and current ways of society, government, business, and religion. What is the same about every human being? Whenever a person is thinking, doing, or talking, that action involves love and children, spouse, family and friends, or community and justice-and little else. That is all there is to a human being, anywhere on the planet, and throughout the 200,000 years of our species. If people raised their hand while thinking of these things, then throughout every day, nearly every person on the planet would have their hand raised. These concerns are innate to our species because we are parenting mammals and social primates. Parenting mammals have existed for 200 million years. Parenting love is millions of years old.Each species of mammals has a social hierarchy, headed by one individual, for example, the alpha wolf. For us apes and monkeys, our hierarchy is not based on the individual but on the extended family. A primate group does not have an alpha male, it has an alpha family. That is why we care first for our extended family members and cooperate as a unit.Why are we a social species? For the surprisingly simple reason that the food of primates occurs in group-sized bundles, so they search for food as a group and then share it when it is found. The group also watches for predators. This is a mutually beneficial exchange of assistance. Our primate ancestors did this for twenty million years. It is in our genes to exchange assistance on any task that is larger than an individual can do alone.Our basic emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, anger, sympathy, pride, embarrassment, guilt, and shame. Some of these emotions occur only in social situations. This small set of emotions developed millions of years ago as they proved to be the best response to situations that continually occurred through thousands of generations. Our emotions are millions of years old, and they are innate-not learned. We are born with these emotions. For example, you get angry only when you feel that you have been wronged. Every human being that has ever lived shares these feelings and emotions.The DNA of a person has about 20,000 genes. About half of our genes produce cells, about half produces arms and legs and livers and such, and about 2% makes us human. Only thirty genes determine our outer appearance, including the shape of our nose, ears, lips, cheeks, jaw, hair color, and skin tone and such. Two human beings share 99.9% of their genes and so are only 0.1% genetically different. This is true whether or not those two individuals come from the same hometown or come from opposite sides of the Earth, and whether or not they are of the same race. Two siblings differ by half of that 0.1%. This also means that a stranger from the other side of the planet is only twice as different from you as is your sibling. Gathering five persons from throughout the planet produces little-more variety than gathering five siblings.We human beings are a bunch of genetic clones-with a range of personalities. We share identical feelings, needs, and desires. How do we differ? Only in cultural details, such as the way that we greet others, celebrate births and weddings, and make food and such. As we grow, we learn our local culture with fierce conviction. Culture consists of our recipes for how to do everything in life, and it involves some 40,000 details that fit in the brain of each person (so we are all very smart).What is the same about each of the world's religions? The Golden Rule is the single most-crucial point of each of them. Onto this is tacked thousands of cultural details. We'll see how when and why did religion expand from nature deities to moral instruction. We'll see how everyday life changed as we switched from being gatherer-hunters to village farmers and then to factory workers.