A David-vs-Goliath story comes in many forms. A small business startup, sports team, musical artist, or an independent movie producer.

Looking only at the numbers, success appears almost impossible. And yet, every generation, some small teams consistently outperform the bigger and dominant ones.

The Russo-Turkish War is that kind of story, and offers key lessons for how we each may perform better than expected.

In the autumn of 1789, an Ottoman army of well over one hundred thousand men advanced into what is now Romania. Waiting for them near the Rymnik River was an allied Austrian and Russian force of less than twenty thousand. If the Ottomans were to win this battle, they could advance far into Central Europe.

Their commanders were Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg and the Russian General Alexander Suvorov. They understood the odds as well as anyone, and also knew they would get no help from larger European powers like France or England. These great powers of Europe were distracted by their own concerns, and France itself stood on the threshold of revolution.

The Ottoman commanders had every reason for confidence. Their empire had dominated southeastern Europe for centuries, and had controlled most of the world’s most valuable trade routes. The Ottoman empire fielded one of the largest armies on Earth. At its heart stood the Janissaries, a professional corps whose discipline and battlefield reputation had become legendary. For generations, European rulers had measured their own armies against the standard the Janissaries had established.

While Ottoman victory looked certain, by the end of the campaign, the smaller allied force had shattered the Ottoman army.

How could this have happened?

Military historians have long admired Suvorov’s leadership, but leadership alone does not explain the result. The Austro-Russian army did not possess a miraculous new weapon, nor did it prevail through lucky chance or wartime tactic. Its real advantage was earned before the war started. It had spent decades learning and adopting better ways of organizing, training, supplying, and coordinating its forces. Infantry, cavalry, artillery, logistics, engineering, and command increasingly operated as parts of a single system. Hundreds of refinements, many borrowed from other armies, had been gained through hard battlefield experience. These small but steady improvements had accumulated into a military organization capable of defeating an opponent many times its size.

Ironically, the Ottoman Empire had once been one of history’s greatest examples of exactly that kind of learning. During its rise, Ottoman rulers borrowed freely from the civilizations around them. They incorporated Byzantine administration, Persian statecraft, Arab scholarship, European artillery, and innovations from countless neighboring cultures. Even the Janissaries themselves represented a bold organizational innovation, solving problems of loyalty and professionalism that had frustrated rulers for centuries.

Success, however, can produce an unexpected hazard.

Organizations naturally preserve successful practices. Over time those practices become traditions, traditions become institutions, and institutions begin protecting themselves. By the eighteenth century, many Ottoman reformers recognized that European armies were changing. They sought new training methods, new command structures, and new military schools. Yet those reforms repeatedly collided with powerful interests that were determined to preserve the existing order. The Janissaries, once an engine of innovation, had become the strongest barrier to change.

The lessons extends far beyond military history, applies to all organizations—including the Janissaries themselves.

First, organizations begin to fail when they become unwilling—or unable—to adopt new ideas.

Second, great competitive advantage seldom comes from a single breakthrough. Organizational strength, and personal skill, is more often built on a steady accumulation of practical improvements, tested by experience, and willingly adopted as change.

More than two thousand years before the battle of Rymnik, the ancient Greeks gave the accumulation of valuable skills a name: techne—the practical knowledge acquired through skill, experience, and craft.

Yet techne was far older than the Greeks.

Deep Origins

Between roughly twelve and six thousand years ago, Neolithic societies began the fastest cultural transformation up to that time in our human history. The transformation happened across several parts of the world, included the domestication of plants and animals, led to many new technological innovations.

Domesticated animals included dogs, sheep, goats, cattle, llamas, pigs, and chickens.

Domesticated plants included wheat, barley, rice, millet, maize (corn), beans, and potatoes.

Key technologies included pottery, weaving, sailing, the wheel, irrigation, and mud-brick architecture.

Hunter-gatherer bands began cultivating crops, herding animals, and settling in permanent villages. Populations grew, and food surpluses appeared. Families remained in one place long enough to build homes, workshops, storage facilities, and eventually towns.

A settled farming community allowed people to specialize. One family became known for pottery, another for weaving, another for toolmaking, another for brewing or carpentry. Skills could now be practiced every day, refined over decades, taught to apprentices, and improved from one generation to the next.

Trade accelerated this process even further. Goods traveled between villages, but so did ideas. A better kiln, a stronger loom, a more effective plow, a new method of preserving food, or a different way of building a shelter could spread across entire regions. Practical knowledge accumulated through observation and experience.

This accumulated practical knowledge was what the ancient Greeks would call techne.

Adaptation

The Neolithic period of roughly 12,000 to 6,000 years ago was a time of rapidly changing culture. Our human biology was changing as well.

Living in larger, permanent communities exposed populations to unfamiliar diseases carried by both humans and domesticated animals. Over many generations, natural selection favored genetic variants for disease resistance. Differences in diet encouraged adaptations affecting metabolism and digestion. In some populations, traits such as adult lactose tolerance became increasingly common. In others, long-term exposure to different environments influenced skin pigmentation, hair and eye color, or even facial morphology.

These adaptations were accompanied by subtler behavioral changes.

Many researchers describe a process of human self-domestication. Compared with our distant ancestors, people became less reactive, more cooperative, and better able to live in increasingly complex social groups. Longer childhoods provided more time for observation, imitation, and learning. As societies became more specialized, individuals devoted years rather than months to mastering particular crafts.

Throughout the Neolithic and into our modern times, new crafts and trades created selective pressures for holding focused attention, grasping complex concepts, or retaining abstract instructions.

Foundations of Techne

The neolithic transition suggests three foundations of techne.

First, innovation emerges from a cross-section of cultures. Throughout the Neolithic, the greatest advances appeared where people, materials, and ideas came together. Trade routes exchanged more than goods; they exchanged techniques, experiments, and practical solutions.

Second, techne grows through the accumulation of practical skills rather than a single moment of genius. The Greeks that first described techne recognized that a variety of skills must be mastered to produce excellent works. Testimony to Greek techne is found in their impressive buildings, statuary, agriculture, writing system, trading industry, and seafaring culture. The Greeks freely adopted skills and crafts from other cultures. As an example, the Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenician writing system, reflecting how practical knowledge and innovation often spread through trade and cultural exchange rather than arising in isolation.

Third, meaningful techne requires time. By the end of the Neolithic, settled societies invested years in apprenticeships because important skills cannot be transferred instantly. Modern organizations often underestimate this reality. Trust, judgment, craftsmanship, leadership, and technical excellence all compound through repeated practice under the guidance of experienced mentors.

These are the most enduring lessons of techne from the Neolithic. Techne emerged from 1) cross-cultural exchange, 2) willing adaptation to new improvements, and 3) steady commitment to skill development over time.

Foundation Layers

Looking across the Working Origins timeline, the Techne marker reflects further moderation of much earlier behaviors associated with Agile Cultures, Myth & Mediation, and Instruction & Iconic Language.

The next and last marker is Education, which describes further and on-going adaptation to modern norms and skills.

Today’s Workplace

In 2020, biochemist Jennifer Doudna shared the Nobel Prize for a breakthrough that is changing medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology. The technique, known as CRISPR gene editing, allows scientists to make remarkably precise changes to DNA.

Yet the breakthrough did not begin with a flash of inspiration. It emerged from decades of accumulated discoveries by researchers around the world. In 1987 scientists first noticed unusual repeating DNA sequences in bacteria. Around 2005, others realized these sequences formed part of a bacterial defense system against invading viruses. Then in 2012, Doudna and her collaborator, Emmanuelle Charpentier, recognized that this ancient bacterial mechanism could be adapted into a practical tool for editing genes.

Common bacteria (Streptococcus pyogenes and Escherichia coli) could be isolated and the molecular machinery directed to produce Cas9 enzymes. When mixed with guide RNA and a DNA molecule with a matching sequence, the Cas9 enzyme recognizes a target and precisely replaces a DNA sequence.

The CRISPR story echoes the origins of techne as a collaboration across countries and cultures. Innovation came on top of countless earlier discoveries.

Cautionary Tale

There is a cautionary lesson in the role played by the Janissaries at the Battle of Rymnik of 1789. By the early 1700s, they had reverted to a political pressure group rather than an elite military force. Membership was inherited or purchased for a fee, and was no longer based on training or fighting skill.

Following the dismal results of Rymnik, Sultan Selim III attempted to modernize the army with a European-style force (the Nizam-ı Cedid, or “New Order”). The Janissaries triggered a revolt and forced him from the throne.

After Selim III was deposed, his supporters attempted to restore him. The Janissaries responded by murdering him inside his own palace in 1808 before he could be rescued.

Following the murder of Selim III, his Grand Vizier Alemdar attempted to restore military reform. Roughly a thousand Janissaries surrounded his residence with the intention of killing him. Trapped and realizing escape was impossible, Alemdar ignited the building's gunpowder magazine, killing himself and an estimated 400 of the attacking Janissaries in the explosion.

In what is now called the “Auspicious Incident” of 1826 everything finally changed for the Janissaries.

Sultan Mahmud II saw that reform was impossible while the Janissaries existed, and set a plan in motion. He deliberately provoked a confrontation and Janissary revolt. Mahmud II had secretly organized loyal artillery forces who began bombarding the Janissary barracks in Istanbul. Thousands were killed or executed, the corps was abolished, and all of its property confiscated.

Few organizations in history have traveled such a dramatic and historic arc. For hundreds of years they were widely admired as an elite and loyal military force. They ended with corruption and such resistance to change that their own government chose to annihilate them.

Takeaways

Techne brings two lessons to mind. One for business leaders. The second for people entering or re-entering the workforce.

The first takeaway is that, like techne, a great business is a collection of skills, processes, and other bits gained over time. Identifying a few bits to add or modify allows a pivotal change while leaving the business core intact.

• Netflix pivoted from distributing physical DVDs to streaming in the mid-2000s.

• Domino’s Pizza reformulated the crust, sauce, and cheese around 2009, and publicly admitted the pizza had not been good enough.

• Starbucks made digital ordering a core capability in 2021, when COVID caused a severe disruption.

The second takeaway addresses the challenges of finding a good fit in today’s changing workplace. Techne offers the lessons of practical skill and invested time.

I am very moved by stories of the challenging job market. However, practical skills are still rewarded.

Leaving professional degrees aside, there are very well-paid jobs available for welders, HVAC technicians, electricians, machinists, plumbers, chefs, dental hygienists, or ERP/CRM administrators. Entry-level qualifications can generally be earned with a year of training or instruction.

Every one of these occupations combines instruction, mentorship, repeated practice, and increasing responsibility.

These are the essential qualities of Techne as seen today, and which align well with the Working Origins motto.

Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations…

• The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies by Steven L. Kuhn (2021) — for how shifting tools and techniques reflect adaptable human behavior across changing environments.

• Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition edited by April Nowell and Iain Davidson (2010) — for how the making and use of stone tools illuminate the evolution of human learning, planning, and skilled craftsmanship.

• Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson (2021) — for more information on Jennifer Doudna and the CRISPR technique, and how scientific discovery, collaboration, and practical innovation continue to reshape human capabilities in the modern world.

• Domesticated by Richard C. Francis (2015) — for how the domestication of plants, animals, and even humans transformed biology, behavior, and civilization.

• Tamed by Alice Roberts (2017) — for an engaging account of how domestication reshaped both human societies and the species that evolved alongside us.

Hidden by the tall reeds and rushes, the young woman waded along the banks of the Euphrates as it passed by the city of Kish, some 4300 years ago. She carried her baby son in a basket woven from these very same reeds.

As the lowest of servants in a house of priests, she knew enough to hide him from curious eyes.

Found among thousands of cuneiform clay tablets from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, here is the chronicle of these events—in the voice of Sargon the Great:

My mother was a changeling, my father I knew not,
The brother of my father loved the hills,
My home was in the highlands, where the herbs grow.
My mother conceived me in secret, she gave birth to me in concealment.
She set me in a basket of rushes, she sealed the lid with tar.
She cast me into the river, but it did not rise over me,
The water carried me to Akki, the drawer of water,
He lifted me out as he dipped his jar into the river,
He took me as his son, he raised me,
He made me his gardener.

This is the birth story of Sargon of Akkad, preserved in the ancient Library of Ashurbanipal.

Sargon would become one of history's first great empire builders. Step by step, he learned the practices that make civilization work. Sargon would go on to unify the Sumerian city-states under a single authority, establish one of the world’s first empires, and create enduring models of centralized administration, military organization, and cross-regional governance that shaped Mesopotamian civilization for generations.

Sargon shows how education—in the broadest sense—serves as the final Working Origins marker.

He rose from gardener to court official, to the king’s cupbearer, and ultimately to ruler of Akkad and Sumer. Along the way, he would have been trained—formally or not—in the core systems of surplus that sustained early civilization.

A surplus is simply more than immediate survival requires. Grain stored after harvest. Extra pottery. Preserved meat. Once societies could reliably store surplus, they could support craftsmen, traders, soldiers, priests, teachers, administrators, and rulers.

Sargon mastered how communities can be turned into civilizations.

He learned the agricultural practices of irrigation, crop cycles and yields, labor coordination for planting and harvest, and how to provision households and temples.

Sargon understood cuneiform scripts, the administrative language of Sumerian, and the Akkadian spoken by the broader population.

He mastered the complexity of trading routes and goods. He knew grain, beer, and oil needed standardized weights and measures, with proper tracking of obligations and deliveries. Sargon established long-distance trade networks to Anatolia in the west and the Indus Valley to the east. The grain, textiles, metals, and stone that moved along these trade networks provided great wealth to the empire.

His fourth key administrative skill was in the area of military command, supply, weapons, formations, and siege tactics.

Sargon mastered the foundations of civilization.

Deep Origins

Around 5,500 years ago, civilizations began to standardize writing and formalize the education of administrators, elites, and priests. Writing and education allowed civilizations to spread across regions and to last for many generations.

Today, technological and cultural innovations constantly reshape how we connect, entertain, shop, travel, eat, and work.

Education, both formal and informal, allows us to keep pace with this rapid change.

Biological Foundations

Today’s cultures are changing at an incredible pace. By comparison, our human biology may appear to adapt more slowly or not at all.

However, human evolution did not stop with the first civilizations. Geneticists remind us that humans continue to evolve. As societies become larger, more interconnected, and more technologically complex, the traits that contribute to success may also change over generations. While the details remain an active area of research, continued biological adaptation is an expected consequence of changing environments and cultures.

Core Behaviors

As civilizations continue to form, our core behaviors adapt and extend well beyond immediate relationships and outcomes.

Training and learning are increasingly mediated by written or video-based instruction. Skills are transferred across time and distance. People learn a narrow and abstract part of a process that is not seen end to end.

Specialized roles. Individuals work in specific roles such as craftsman, farmer, civil servant, educator, or administrator. This requires discipline and an understanding of your place within the community.

Institutional trust. Civilization introduced a new kind of trust in measurements, records, transactions, and institutions. A tally represents an amount of grain. A seal represents authority. A coin represents value. People increasingly learned to trust symbols as much as the people behind them.

Law of the harvest. Individuals learned to accept delayed returns—planting for future harvest, storing rather than consuming, working now for the promise of future benefit.

These behaviors are part of all civilizations today. They shape how we learn, work, and adapt within modern organizations and communities.

Foundation Layers

Successful education and training are ensured when we are mindful of our human foundations.

E is for Emotions, States, and Drives: Absolutely be motivated by your own needs and wants—for yourself or family. Recognize and value your authentic motivations— ambition, desire, or even the need for a simpler life.
S is for Social Learning: All our best human adaptations start as a team, even when the adaptation is personal. If you are retraining, look to a class or group. If you are learning a new sport, join a team or club. If you are in a formal school, be part of a study group. That is how humans are built.
T is for Trust & Trade: Work and understand the workplace environment. Build trust networks with customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors. These expand access to your own knowledge and opportunity.
I is for Instruction and Iconic Language: Seek sound instruction from trusted sources. Align and share in common workplace language and culture.
M is for Myth & Mediation: Be deliberate in what you choose to believe. Belief is a very powerful human expression, especially when aligned with others.
A is for Agile Cultures: Express your innate human agility, even for small incremental changes. Human agility is best expressed by those groups that have a clear vision of what their future may be.
T is for Techne: Apply yourself to developing a practical craft or skill. Use the time, materials, and knowledge available to you with purpose and growing competence.
E is for Education: Education opens the door to new technologies, new communities, and new opportunities.

Today’s Workplace

One encouraging lesson from history is that every major cultural change creates new opportunities for people willing to learn.

Some of today’s fastest-growing opportunities require surprisingly little time to enter.

Modern skilled trades remain in high demand as our buildings, vehicles, and energy systems become more sophisticated. Electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, and solar installers combine practical craftsmanship with increasingly advanced technology. Most enter these careers through apprenticeships or relatively short training programs.

Healthcare is expanding just as rapidly. As populations age, more people choose to remain in their homes rather than move into assisted living. Home health aides, personal care assistants, and community caregivers provide meaningful work that combines practical skills with genuine human connection.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity of all is education itself. Every new technology creates demand for people who can explain it, teach it, and help others apply it. Trainers, instructors, certification specialists, and workplace coaches become the bridge that allows new knowledge to spread throughout society.

Many other growing fields reflect the same pattern:

• Platform-based local services

• E-commerce fulfillment and logistics

• Digital customer support and remote operations

• Food service specialization and cultural dining

• Experience-based travel and local guiding

The specific occupations will continue to change. What remains constant is that people who continue learning are best prepared to participate in whatever new industries emerge next.

Takeaways

These three takeaways are heartfelt messages to family and friends around the world.

1. Education has become our way of adapting to cultural change.
   From the first cities to today's global economy, our own success depends on learning new tools, new roles, and new ways of working together. The pace has accelerated, but the mechanism is the same. Those who learn fastest are best positioned to gainfully participate.

2. Education is increasingly accessible and informal.
   Historically, education was expensive and often limited to schools, apprenticeships, and formal roles. Today access has greatly widened. Training, self-directed learning, and real-time instruction are available to anyone motivated to engage. In many cases, the self-directed paths move faster than formal education.

3. Use the Working Origins model to manage the risk of change.
   Change always carries risk and uncertainty. The Working Origins model connects you to our human past and to other people today. You are at your best when you work within a team, develop a trust network, share common instruction and language, are unified in belief, and have a clear vision of what the future may hold.

Education is now key to both personal and business growth in a changing world, and reflects a simple truth at the core of Working Origins:

Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations…

The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009) by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending — explores how human biological adaptations continue alongside the rise of agriculture and civilization.

A History of the Ancient World (2007) by Susan Wise Bauer — a broad and accessible narrative of early civilizations, including a terrific story of Sargon. It is complemented by her lecture-style podcast series on the ancient world.

By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean (2015) by Barry Cunliffe — examines how geography and movement shaped early human networks and cultural exchange.

Code Breaker (2021) by Walter Isaacson — recounts how Jennifer Doudna and others discovered accurate gene-editing processes and then built machines to do so at scale.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005) by Charles C. Mann — reframes pre-Columbian societies as complex, populous, and highly organized.

Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World (2006) by Philip Matyszak — highlights lesser-known civilizations and cultures that contributed to the ancient world’s diversity.

Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond — A well-read classic that investigates how environmental and geographic factors shaped the development of civilizations.

The Story of Human Language (2013) by John McWhorter — an engaging overview of how language evolves and supports cultural transmission.

Each marker represents a set of biological and cultural adaptations that improved how we work together. Today, the biological adaptations remain encoded within us. However, not all teams develop the cultural conditions needed to unlock and express good workplace behaviors.

That is the leadership challenge addressed here in Working Origins.

The ESTIMATE acronym serves as a memory device to recall the eight marker labels.

Emotions, States & Drives

Our pre-human ancestors possessed the emotions, states, and drives that were well fit to the savannah of East Africa, and are the foundation of who we are today.

Australopithecus afarensis is the hominid commonly associated with this period of roughly 3.5 million years ago. A afarensis showed significant intelligence and social group behaviors.

Social Learning

Most experts describe Homo habilis as our first human ancestor, with clear evidence of populations in the East African Savannah from 3 to 1.5 million years ago.

Ancestors such as H. habilis established an enduring Oldowan stone-tool culture that could spread from one group to another and from one generation to the next. Associated behaviors include tool craft and use, social learning, and group bonding through care and shame.

Trust & Trade

Homo erectus populations spread widely across Africa, Asia, and Europe from about 1.5 million to 750 thousand years ago.

During this time, human ancestors began transporting and exchanging goods. Associated behaviors included self-identity, empathy, and theory of mind.

Instruct with Language

From 850 to 350 thousand years ago, several populations of interrelated ancestors lived across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Here they are described simply as archaic Homo sapiens.

This period saw the rise of several important behaviors, including the use of iconic language, longer childhood development, improved deliberation and executive control, innovation in toolmaking, and the emergence of shared identity across groups and communities.

Myth & Mediation

A number of human populations existed across Africa and Eurasia from 450 to 100 thousand years ago. In this timeline, they are described as early Homo sapiens.

This period is marked by the controlled use of fire, the emergence of storytelling and myth, and the earliest belief systems.

Agile Cultures

From 90,000 to 12,000 years ago, our ancestors spread from Africa to nearly all parts of the world. This marker describes them as diasporic Homo sapiens.

Behavioral expressions during this time included specialized tools and group roles, exploration and creativity, planning and improved episodic memory, and the sharing of abstract ideas across groups—including concepts of future places and times.

Techne

From roughly 15,000 to 2,500 years ago, neolithic Homo sapiens developed Techne. This is a little used word that precisely describes material intelligence. H sapiens domesticated most of the plants and animals that would become the foundation of civilization.

At the same time, neolithic H sapiens adapted to major changes in lifestyle and behavior. These included new technologies, village-based (sedentary) living, new diseases, specialized crafts, and expanded trading systems.

Education

Beginning around 5,500 years ago, the first civilizations of modern Homo sapiens emerged in Mesopotamia, the Nile River Valley, the Indus Valley, along the Yellow River, in Mesoamerica, and in the Andean region.

Writing was a common feature across these civilizations—if we broaden the definition to include all durable information systems. These included knotted cords, symbols, bone scripts, glyphs, and icons.

Some level of formalized education became necessary to participate in civilized society—enabling individuals to understand crafts, systems of exchange, labor roles, laws, and religious practices.

Writing and education enabled persistent and durable cultural transmission, across communities and many generations.

Roughly 150 years ago, two groups of castaways were stranded on the same sub-antarctic island for more than a year and did not discover each other.

One group essentially rescued themselves, and all survived. The other group expressed the worst of human impulses, and a remnant few were saved by blind luck.

The two stories reveal a great deal about leadership.

“We should draw lots to see who should be killed and eaten first,” whispered the boatswain to the other officers of the Invercauld. The 888-ton sailing vessel now lay dashed to pieces along the cliffs of the northwest Auckland Islands, a miserably cold place in the sub-Antarctic ocean, later described as the “Jaws of Hell.”

It was May of 1864, four days since the wreck of the Invercauld. Almost all of the eighteen survivors of the 25-man crew had passed those first days in stunned inactivity, clinging to rock ledges and narrow outcroppings above the surf. Captain George Dalgarno and his officers had brought nothing from the wreck—not even proper boots—leaving the men exposed to cold, hunger, and the pounding sea.

Seaman Robert Holding had not spent those days waiting. The son of an English gamekeeper, and seasoned by years prospecting alone in the Australian outback, he began at once to assess the land for survival. On the first day, he found a way up the cliffs to the grassy heights above, where gentler slopes led down toward inlets that might offer shellfish, fresh water, and shelter.

He climbed back down the cliffs and urged the others to follow. With loud complaints, they did—up to the heights and then down the grassy slopes to a sandy beach. He gathered shellfish, built a fire, and even killed and roasted a young seal, which the officers and crew eagerly devoured.

But as the days passed, he watched the officers withdraw again—silent, inactive, issuing only occasional commands for firewood or water.

It was then, while serving them, that Holding overheard the discussion of drawing lots.

That was enough. Holding now knew he could not depend on the officers for his survival.

Unknown to them, another shipwreck had already stranded five men on the southern end of the same island in the Auckland Islands archipelago.

On January 3, 1864, the schooner Grafton was driven ashore by a violent storm. Among the crew was François Raynal, the first officer, already weakened by illness when the ship struck. He was thrown ashore with four others onto that cold, sub-Antarctic shore—more than 200 miles south of New Zealand.

Raynal later wrote that he expected to die. But what followed was something very different.

Under the steady leadership of Captain Thomas Musgrave—and with Raynal as his closest partner—the five men organized themselves for survival. They established shelter, hunted and rationed food, and learned through trial how to prevent scurvy using local plants.

They assigned roles and rotated responsibilities to meet the needs of the group.

They also taught one another. In the evenings, they held lessons in mathematics, language, and reading. The crew—French, Swedish, English, and Portuguese—became, in effect, a small society.

Raynal, nursed back to health by the others, became indispensable. Using salvaged materials, he helped design and build a forge, with working bellows made from seal skins. From that forge, he produced the tools—nails, augers, fittings—that made a remarkable rescue possible.

After eighteen months, with no rescue in sight, the five men had built a 17-foot decked boat from the wreckage of the Grafton. They then sailed it across 200 nautical miles of open ocean to New Zealand.

They had built and executed their own means of rescue.

In stark contrast, Captain George Dalgarno and the officers of the Invercauld maintained a rigid separation between themselves and the crew. As later described by Holding, there was no effort to plan, assess, or organize the group toward survival.

Returning from one scouting trip, Holding saw officer Mahoney directing the two cabin boys, Liddle and Lansfield, to repeatedly fetch water and dig for roots. Mahoney never left his place by the fire. He ate and drank without sharing.

When Holding returned again, the scene had changed. Mahoney was now wearing the boys’ clothing over his own. The two cabin boys lay dead.

Mahoney ordered Holding to fetch him more roots. Holding refused. Mahoney then opened his jackknife and threatened him. Bending down, Holding picked up a stone and answered, “I’m too old a hand to be cowed by an Irish New York bully.” Mahoney paused, then lay back on his stretcher by the fire.

Meanwhile, Holding continued to range outward in search of seals, birds, eggs, and shellfish. Over the course of several months, he urged the others to move as each food source was exhausted around their camp. During one of these moves, as he coaxed the remaining group toward a new location with fresh supplies, officer Mahoney refused to go. His lifeless body was later found beside the cold remains of the fire.

At night, Holding slept apart from the officers, but returned to guide them when he could.

On May 22, 1865, the Spanish ship Julian rescued just three survivors of the Invercauld: Robert Holding, Captain George Dalgarno, and first officer Andrew Smith. Twenty-two others had died over the twelve months spent on Auckland Island.

These two groups of men had been stranded on the same island, during the same year of 1864. Neither group knew of the other until long after their rescue.

Five men, working together, built structure, sound plans, and a deep care for one another. All five survived by engineering their own escape.

Twenty-five men, divided by hierarchy and neglect, failed to organize as a group. Only three survived—and only by chance.

Each of us carries the same human biology as these men.

So how do we end up behaving in such different ways?

And what does that mean for the teams we depend on today—especially the workplace teams that provide our livelihood?

The answers come from the start of our human story—nearly 3 million years ago.

Deep Origins

Between roughly 3 and 1.5 million years ago, our earliest human ancestors—such as Homo habilis—survived using Oldowan stone tools in East Africa. To our best understanding, these simple choppers and flakes were used to quickly scavenge meat from large prey animals such as gazelle or wildebeest.

H. habilis was slight of build, standing about four feet tall, and no match for the lions and hyenas that brought these animals down. With Oldowan tools, they could dash out to an abandoned kill and quickly hack off chunks of meat, cut sinew, and break bones. Strong, gripping hands then carried this food back to trees or sheltered areas—safely away from returning predators.

These tools became so central to survival that, over roughly 1.5 million years, H. habilis developed what we can describe as an Oldowan culture—marked by social learning, care for one another, shame, and non-verbal communication.

Without any formal language, young or newly accepted group members learned by observing and mimicking more experienced adults. Over time, they acquired the skills to locate raw materials and to make, carry, and use stone tools. This form of social learning allowed Oldowan practices to persist across generations and to spread between groups.

Group cohesion was reinforced through acts of care—nurturing the wounded, protecting the vulnerable, and sharing food. These were not optional behaviors; they were essential to group survival.

Shame emerged as a fast, adaptive mechanism to keep individuals aligned with the group under constant pressure. It is the internal social signal that arises when an individual senses they are out of step with group expectations—and at risk of rejection or loss of standing.

Non-verbal social signals, inherited from earlier primate ancestors, were refined and reinforced during this time—and remain with us today. Open hands and arms signaled a non-threatening approach. The open-mouth grin and vocalizations evolved into our smiles and laughter. Averted gaze and lowered posture signaled submission and helped prevent conflict.

These tightly bonded groups became highly resilient over countless generations, capable of enduring the persistent challenges of territorial conflict, drought, famine, and disease.

Early researchers such as Louis, Mary, and Jonathan Leakey identified Homo habilis and the Oldowan tool tradition. Later researchers, including John Napier and Phillip Tobias, described the hand and cranial features associated with tool use, while more recent work—such as that of Robin Dunbar—has helped frame the relationship between brain development, social behavior, and group size. Dunbar’s number, often cited at around 150 individuals, reflects a rough upper limit on the number of stable social relationships humans can maintain - even today.

Biological Foundations

Through roughly 1.5 million years of Oldowan-era life, early humans underwent meaningful biological changes that shaped how they lived and survived together. These were not sudden transformations, but gradual shifts that improved group coordination, learning, and cohesion.

Brain size increased over this period, but more important than size alone was how the brain was reorganized. Regions associated with attention, social awareness, and decision-making became more developed.

Connectivity within the brain also improved, allowing information to move more efficiently across regions.

These changes supported larger, more stable groups, reduced reactive aggression, and improved social learning and cultural transmission.

There is also evidence that specialized neurons, including von Economo neurons (VENs), became more prominent in regions such as the anterior cingulate and insula. These areas are associated with social awareness, error detection, and an internal sense of self in relation to others. While we should be cautious about projecting modern self-awareness too far back, these developments suggest an emerging capacity to recognize when one is out of step with the group—and to adjust accordingly.

These are the biological foundations of strongly bonded and successful groups.

Core Behaviors

Based on these biological foundations, three key behaviors define a well-bonded group.

The first is alignment to a successful survival strategy. All members of an H. habilis group were aligned around the use of Oldowan tools as essential to survival. Likewise, the Grafton crew adapted to their new environment and aligned to a clear strategy—including a 17-foot vessel for escape. In sharp contrast, the Invercauld crew and officers were not aligned to any shared survival strategy. The officers maintained a separate and higher status, with no clear plan beyond outlasting the crew. This failed both the environmental challenges of the Auckland Islands and the most basic requirement of a well-bonded group.

The second behavior is social learning. Every member of a well-bonded group must invest in and reinforce the group’s culture. A young H. habilis would observe and mimic the patterns of more experienced adults. The Grafton crew, led by their officers, met each evening to plan, teach, and learn.

The Invercauld officers, by contrast, refused to adapt, align with, or even value the seasoned experience of Robert Holding. After his rescue, Captain Dalgarno pressured Holding to remain silent about what had occurred on the island. His official report offered only a brief and generalized account of “overcoming great challenges,” making no mention of Holding or his life-saving actions.

The third characteristic of well-bonded groups is strong cohesion, reinforced through genuine care and shame. This goes beyond obligation. Group members willingly share food, care for one another, and moderate their own needs in service of the group. They feel a deep sense of shame when they violate group expectations—or even when they sense that others may see them as doing so.

Captain Thomas Musgrave showed this kind of care even after his own rescue. The limitations of the 17-foot vessel prevented all five men from leaving the island at once; two had to remain behind. After reaching New Zealand, Musgrave devoted all of his effort to organizing a return rescue. His health was failing, and he had no financial resources of his own. He went door to door, seeking support from homes and businesses. His persistence paid off. Five weeks later, he returned to the Auckland Islands and rescued the remaining two members of his crew.

Foundation Layers

Looking across the Working Origins timeline, Social Learning moderates the earlier drives and emotions that we inherited from our primate ancestors. The next marker, Trust & Trade, expands these behaviors beyond the immediate group into broader networks of cooperation.

In the Modern Workplace

Jeff Bezos popularized the phrase “two-pizza teams,” referring to small, manageable teams at Amazon that can get meaningful work done quickly. These teams are intentionally kept small—well within the limits of what individuals can comfortably manage and relate to—and are aligned around a clear objective or strategy. Shared meals, daily planning, and learning together naturally reinforce the biological foundations of well-bonded teams. Expressions of care, feelings of shame, and personal commitment emerge as natural outcomes.

Modern military organizations are built around small, tightly bonded units. Military leaders recognize that trust, discipline, and mutual commitment grow most naturally in groups where each person is known personally and shares hardship, challenge, and success with others. They become well-bonded teams whose members willingly place the success of the group, and often one another's lives, above their own immediate interests.

Takeaways

Each of us in today’s workplace hopes to be part of a well-bonded and highly successful team.

We can apply a few clear guidelines.

Success strategy. A clear picture of success should be visible to everyone. It is surprising how often team members cannot describe what success looks like—let alone how it connects to the broader business strategy. Each person should feel a sense of ownership in that outcome.

Social learning. Strong teams share a culture of expectations and performance. Written policies may exist, but visible patterns matter most. Patterns of work, training, planning, communication, and response should all align to the success strategy. These visible patterns are what build culture.

Shame and care. When a team shares a common strategy and culture, members naturally feel accountable to one another. They experience shame when they fall short of group expectations, and genuine care when others need help.

Non-verbal signals. More than a million years before primitive language, the Oldowan culture included non-verbal signals. Today, the influence of non-verbal signals can be difficult to measure, but it is always present. Modern teams are physically distributed, working through video, audio, and shared systems. Even so, non-verbal signals remain essential—just as they have for millions of years. Eye contact, gestures, a smile or laugh, a pause, a handshake, shared time, shared space. The strongest teams make deliberate use of these important signals, even when separated by distance.

Good teams are the bedrock on which strong business networks are built.

Well-bonded teams reflect a simple truth at the core of Working Origins:

Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations…
Island of the Lost by Joan Druett — for the story of Auckland Island castaways and the role of group cohesion in survival.
Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition by April Nowell and Iain Davidson — for the relationship between tool use and biological adaptation.
On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson — for the co-evolution of culture and biology.
The Making of Mankind by Richard Leakey — for a grounded account of early Homo, including Homo habilis.
How Many Friends Does One Person Need? by Robin Dunbar — for insight into the social limits and structures that shape human groups.

I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering some years ago. My studies covered historical figures like James Watt, who helped to reshape the modern world. His story is a good introduction to this post on Agile Cultures.

Watt was slight, frequently ill, socially awkward, and prone to depression. In 1772 he inherited the debt of his partner John Roebuck after their steam engine venture collapsed. Years earlier, while repairing a model engine at the University of Glasgow, Watt had recognized a major inefficiency in the Newcomen engine design and developed the separate condenser to solve it. Watt’s great insight was the basis for his venture with Roebuck.

But as many of us painfully learn, good insight is not the same as business success. Watt’s engines were expensive and hard to build. Manufacturing lacked consistency, and investors hesitated.

Matthew Boulton saw something different. He was an accomplished manufacturer at the Soho Manufactory in Birmingham, and Boulton understood organization and scale. He met Watt at a meeting of the Lunar Society, an informal club of scientists, industrialists, and thinkers. Recognizing what the engine could become, he acquired Roebuck’s share of Watt’s patent. Where Watt saw a better machine, Boulton had the vision of a marvelous future. He saw that steam engines would spread all through a newly-powered world.

Under Boulton’s leadership, production stabilized, installations expanded, and financing improved. Steam power shifted to an industrial foundation. Mines drained faster, mills ran more reliably, and power was no longer tied exclusively to rivers or muscle. Within a generation, the improved steam engine spread across Britain and beyond, helping to drive the Industrial Revolution.

Watt’s name remains with us each time we purchase a light bulb measured in watts, a quiet reminder of his work.

Steam engines existed before Watt. Mechanical knowledge was not new. What changed was vision—the ability to imagine a transformed future and reorganize people and effort around it.

But that ability to envision future possibilities did not begin in Birmingham. It began long ago, and is part of a different story.

Deep Origins

The period of human history that best highlights cultural agility is sometimes called the great Out-of-Africa Expansion.

Between roughly 90,000 and 12,000 years ago, Homo sapiens expanded from East Africa across the Middle East, into Eurasia, Australia, and eventually the Americas.

This series of migrations unfolded across many challenges. Our ancestors encountered new animals and plants, extreme climates, deserts, tundras, swamps, jungles, land and water barriers, and other hominin populations.

We interbred with human cousins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. We acquired new genes and adaptations. And we very likely acquired new cultural tools and some language elements from these cousin groups.

Ancient DNA research shows that human migrations and genetic admixtures have been continuous, at least from 75,000 years ago, and most likely from well before.

We see clear evidence of cultural admixture as well. Hunters became fishers along coasts. Stone toolmakers adapted to bone and antler. Artisans used new pigments, ornaments, totems, and visibly expressed beliefs. Clothing was tailored for cold or hot climates. Nets, needles, lamps, and storage pits appeared. Notched bones and symbolic markings preserved memory across seasons.

There is evidence of longer-term planning—anticipating and preparing for winter, spring floods, and animal migrations. Humans adapted to new foods and preparations. They buried their dead with grave goods to prepare for the unseen afterlife.

Research suggests that diasporic Homo Sapiens could imagine opportunities well beyond the visible horizon. By diasporic Homo sapiens, I simply mean the expanding populations that dispersed across multiple continents during the Out-of-Africa Expansion.

Biological Foundations

Why did the out-of-Africa migrations succeed? How did our ancestors quite suddenly displace all other hominin populations, despite their own adaptations to climates and regions?

I do not believe there is a single adaptation, cultural or genetic, that was the source of such expansion. There is no particular weapon, or language, or use of fire.

There is, however, good evidence of a tipping point, from the accumulation of key adaptations. I believe these adaptations gave us cultural agility.

Our brain systems became more developed and more coordinated to support clear episodic memory, emotional integration, and improved social cognition.

Humans demonstrated stronger recall of past experience and greater ability to project possible futures. Symbolic thought expanded. Childhood lengthened, allowing extended learning and social development.

Interestingly, overall brain size declined slightly after about 35,000 years ago while neural efficiency improved. This may suggest that the integration of thought mattered more than sheer cranial volume.

Biology alone did not cause expansion, but it supported the cultural flexibility, foresight, and group cohesion that quite literally changed our human world.

Core Behaviors of Agile Cultures

Four behaviors are evidenced by diasporic Homo sapiens during this period of roughly 90,000 to 12,000 years ago.

First, shared visions unified group effort. The controlled use of fire had earlier opened up the night to our human ancestors. There is good evidence they gathered in the firelight each evening. Increasingly rich language, arts, and symbols were used to tell stories of the past and envision a better future.

Second, our planning now extended well beyond immediate needs, anticipating longer seasonal cycles, periodic animal migrations, and advance preparation of tools and materials.

Third, the roles within a group became more specialized and flexible to fit with new ecologies and conditions. Human cultures could adapt to adverse conditions more quickly than human biology.

Fourth, curiosity and abstract thinking drove exploration into new ideas, new places, and new tools. Improved episodic memory preserved the lessons of success and failure, and accelerated our cultural adaptation to diverse places around the world.

Each behavior built on the accumulated biological adaptations of diasporic Homo sapiens.

The Foundation Layers

Agile cultures did not arise in isolation. As described by the Working Origins timeline, they were built on earlier layers of emotions and drives, social learning, trust and trade, instruction and iconic language, myth and mediation.

By 90,000 years ago, Homo sapiens already had these core foundations.

What emerged during this period was a better integration of memory, foresight, language, and social cooperation. As mentioned, improved memory and foresight aligned with cultural practices of exploration, planning, and shared meaning. This allowed flexible and agile communities to cross ecological barriers, carrying human presence across the globe.

Agile cultures led to the rise of Techne, or material intelligence, during the Neolithic period starting 12,000 years ago. Techne is the next marker in the Working Origins timeline, describing the domestication of plants and animals, and an associated burst of crafts and skills.

In the Modern Workplace

Seen in this light, Watt and Boulton were expressing ancient patterns of agile organizations. Watt explored, experimented, and refined solutions through careful planning. Boulton acted in a different role. He brought manufacturing discipline, financial structure, and networks, but most importantly he had the vision of a new world.

Shared trust, language, and vision helped smooth over points of friction, guide the progress, and scale up to real growth.

Modern organizations often resemble Watt before Boulton. Skilled people, functioning systems, and genuine innovation are present. Curiosity exists. Planning occurs. Experience accumulates. What may be missing is alignment around a credible future.

Agile cultures emerge when exploration, role clarity, and planning are coordinated by a shared vision of a better way.

Takeaways

Four lessons from agile cultures apply directly to modern business teams.

1. Build a shared vision. Recognize the power behind a team driving to a better future. The vision may come from within or outside of the group. Share and craft the vision to help unify your team. Listen and observe, and harmonize with feedback. Most visions are not a good fit until a trial-and-error process makes them so.

2. Plan for new tools. These may include processes, roles, materials, or training. New business often means a new business tool culture.

3. Act in new roles. Team members must prepare for new roles, as needed. This can represent difficult change management and is often a leadership challenge.

4. Value diversity of experience. Along any new path, diverse challenges come from the new places, people, or cultures we encounter. These challenges become strengths as we experience and fit around them. This is how we build resilience. Think of our ancestors migrating to all parts of the world. This is a pattern for how human teams adapt.

Cultural agility is not new to us. It is one of our oldest strengths.

Take hopeful comfort in the Working Origins motto: Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations…
The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies by Steven L. Kuhn (2021) — for how shifting tools and techniques reflect adaptable human behavior across changing environments.
Neanderthal Man by Svante Pääbo (2014) — for insight into our interaction with Neanderthals and what genetics reveals about shared histories.
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich (2018) — for a clear account of human migrations and population mixing revealed through ancient DNA.
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff (2022) — for the peopling of the Americas, cultural exchange, and the long arc of migration into new worlds.

This post has great meaning for me. In the 1990s I was was an engineer at Honeywell working on control systems for jet engines. I remember participating in team-based training that quite literally opened my young mind to the challenges and benefits of good teamwork.

We’ll open with a story from Japan in the 1950s. Many of you may be familiar with Toyota’s impressive growth and quality innovations of the late 20th century.

This is the story of how a simple icon - the andon cord - became a powerful key to quality and growth.

Taiichi Ohno was a mid-level engineer inside a struggling Toyota company. Post-war Japan was economically shattered. Toyota had endured a devastating labor strike, its president had resigned, and production lagged far behind the USA automakers in Detroit.

Ohno visited American factories at the time, and noticed that stopping the assembly line was unthinkable. It required executive authority. It threatened careers and signaled failure. American business was structured so that responsibility for work flowed downward, while authority flowed upward.

Ohno inverted that structure.

He proposed that any frontline worker — even the newest hire — could halt production. All it required was something he called the andon cord. Pull it, and the line stopped. Machines froze. Supervisors rushed. Problems surfaced.

This andon cord did not build a car or fix a defect. By itself, it produced nothing. Its power was latent. It worked only if workers were trained, if managers responded without punishment, and if everyone shared the same definition of quality.

The cord redistributed authority for quality. It was no longer inspected for, at the end of the process, because it was owned at the source. That risky, countercultural shift became the foundation of a production system that would spread across Japan, then across the United States, and eventually across the world.

But the idea behind the Andon cord did not begin in 1950.

It began roughly 750,000 years ago.

Deep Origins

From roughly 800,000 to 300,000 years ago, ancestral humans expanded across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Multiple hominin groups coexisted and interbred. Morphology shifted. Tool complexity increased.

This period did not produce modern language overnight. There was no bright line that signaled BOOM - we had language.

Specific vocalizations, likely associated with crafts and tools, began to represent actions, objects, and shared meanings. Over many generations, these sounds became iconic words.

Our best understanding is that these iconic words stopped well short of our modern language. But iconic language unlocked tremendous advances.

Instruction became more deliberate. Human childhood lengthened. Cultural transmission deepened.

Please note that the label “archaic Homo sapiens” is used here as a behavioral descriptor of several populations, rather than a strict taxonomic boundary. Gene flow and cultural transmission crossed many ancestral peoples.

Neural Foundations

Compared to earlier hominins such as Homo erectus, these ancestors show larger brain volume, more rounded cranial vaults, increased integration between frontal and parietal regions, and greater hemispheric specialization.

These adaptations are strongly associated with abstract thinking and culture-based instruction.

Our executive control improved. Our impulse moderation strengthened. We could delay reaction, listen, and coordinate deliberately.

The brain did not simply enlarge. It became more connected. That connectivity allowed symbols — sounds, gestures, tools — to reliably carry meaning across many individuals and groups.

Iconic language and abstract thinking led to a clear adaptive advantage. Tools became more complex and useful. Populations bonded with a shared identity.

These neural foundations remain part of us today. A symbol like the andon cord carries meaning — but only if we have been trained to understand it.

Core Behaviors

Four behavioral shifts characterize this period, and remain key to transformative change at a group or workplace level.

1. Instruction. Humans became increasingly capable of teaching one another.

   Knowledge more easily passed between groups and to the next generation. Longer childhood meant longer dependency and group investment.

2. Deliberation. Improved executive control allowed individuals and groups to pause and discuss options before acting. Instruction works best when people can hear, interpret, and respond intentionally.

3. Innovation. Toolmaking became more refined, as planning horizons extended, and mental representation expanded. One craft led to another. Communities borrowed successful practices from neighboring cultures.

   Knowledge accumulated over generations, leading to tools, methods, and technologies that no individual could have created alone.

4. Shared Identity. Words and icons were shared, and marked the identity of groups and communities. Cultural boundaries and alliances expanded.

In the Modern Workplace

The andon cord is an iconic device that illustrates the core adaptations from long ago.

Toyota’s vocabulary — kaizen, gemba, kanban, andon — spread globally.

These iconic words were cognitive tools that encoded behaviors and shaped perception. As the language traveled, so did the system. Factories across continents could reproduce the same coordination because they shared the same symbolic framework.

This was cultural transmission at scale.

Modern organizations function the same way. A shared language and training builds a cultural identity across teams, customers, suppliers, and partners.

The Foundation Layer

The development of language matured gradually across hundreds of thousands of years. As represented on the Working Origins timeline, early vocalizations were certainly present before 800 kya, in ancestral homo Erectus populations.

Language continued to enrich and develop after the 300 kya marker, in early and modern homo Sapiens.

There was no sudden breakthrough, no singular invention. But as language developed, cultural change accelerated. Knowledge moved across generations more reliably, skills could be transmitted without direct imitation, and innovation began to compound.

As described by the Working Origins timeline, the marker “Instruct with language” builds upon earlier behaviors represented in the timeline sequence: emotions and drives, social learning, and trust and trade.

Takeaways

Three takeaways apply to our modern business teams.

First, instruction and training must be a priority for workplace teams. Each team member be personally committed. This builds a strong and shared culture.

Second, common language and cultural values have a bonding influence on a business ecosystem of customers, suppliers, and partners. Great brands like Apple, Nike, Mercedes-Benz, Google, and FedEx are built this way.

Third, building cultural depth requires time and investment by executives. Organizations that prioritize the necessary training and instruction consistently outperform those that don’t.

In the next post, we’ll jump forward along the Working Origins timeline to the agile cultures marker — which describes the adaptations that powered the great out-of-Africa expansions.

Until then, remember the Working Origins motto:

Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations:

The Language Puzzle (2024) by Steven Mithen, a careful and engaging account of how language emerged across deep human time.
The Language Instinct (1997) by Steven Pinker, a foundational work on the biological basis of language.
The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins, which frames how traits and behaviors persist across generations.

Additional perspectives help round out the modern view.
The Singing Neanderthals (2005), also by Steven Mithen, proposes a “musilanguage” stage preceding fully symbolic speech.
From Hand to Mouth (2006) by Michael C. Corballis argues for gestural origins of language.
The Prehistory of the Mind (1996), also by Steven Mithen, remains influential in framing the emergence of cognitive fluidity.
The Symbolic Species (1997) by Terrence Deacon links brain evolution to symbolic capacity.
Language Evolution (2010) by W. Tecumseh Fitch offers a comprehensive synthesis across disciplines.

The widely cited paper The Faculty of Language (2002) by Noam Chomsky, Marc Hauser, and Fitch distinguishes core language capacity from broader cognitive systems.

Finally, genetic work on FOXP2, associated with Svante Pääbo, provides important evidence linking both Neanderthals and modern humans to shared speech-related capabilities.

Workplace advice rarely begins with the brutal murder of innocent children.

Perhaps it should.

By the year 602 CE, the Roman Empire of Byzantium was thriving in Egypt and North Africa, Anatolia and the Levant, Greece & the Balkans. Emperor Maurice had ruled successfully for many years, and he was devoted to his wife and large family. He had settled wars, improved laws codes. His five sons were well trained and ready to assume command when he passed.

But in the winter of that year, Maurice made a financial decision that would cost him everything. His army was exhausted after years of fighting Avars and Slavic tribes north of the Danube. Supplies were thin and the winter was brutal. Byzantine tradition dictated that the troops should return home to their families and farms.

But Maurice ordered them to stay. The treasury was depleted by the lengthy and ongoing wars to the north and with the Persians to the east. To cut costs, he halted supply shipments and delayed payments. He remained in Constantinople, far from the frozen camps.

A low-ranking officer named Phocas rallied the starving troops from their winter camps. His mutiny turned to revolution as they marched south to Constantinople. Maurice was completely unprepared, because his attention and remaining army were focused on Persian threats to the east. Maurice was easily captured and then paraded around to the jeers of onlookers. He was then forced to watch the execution of his five sons, one by one, before he himself was killed.

Maurice had been one of the greatest of emperors in the 1000-year history of Byzantium. He reformed military law. He stabilized borders. He wrote the Strategikon, a manual that would influence generals for many centuries.

But he violated something older than empire, laws, or tradition. He violated trust.

And that mistake did not begin in 602. It began more than one million years ago.

The Deep Origin of Trust

Between 1.5 million and 800,000 years ago, our ancestor Homo erectus began forming long-distance trade networks. Tools, pigments, and crafts moved across landscapes. Groups encountered one another not only in conflict, but in exchange.

Trade requires something dangerous: delayed reciprocity. You give now and trust they will give later. That shift changed everything.

Neural Foundations

To sustain exchange, new neural capacities emerged. The prefrontal cortex supported planning and self-regulation. Temporal and parietal regions supported perspective-taking. Limbic systems integrated emotion with valuation and memory. Together, these systems enabled self-awareness, self-identity, empathy, and a theory of mind.

We should remember that trust behaviors emerged well before true iconic language. For H erectus, learning happened by observation and patterns of repetition. Physical presence of a well-known individual could signal safety. Repeated and good exchanges built a trust & trade network. Bad exchanges signaled an enemy.

Over time, trade cultures would out-compete the smash-and-grab cultures that did not, or could not, participate in exchange networks. Trust & trade became an adaptive advantage, as strong exchange networks could better survive droughts, conflicts, and other threats.

The Four Trust Behaviors

From these deep origins we can extract the four foundational behaviors of trust & trade.

First, know your role. Exchange requires identity and presence. Your partner must recognize who you are and what you contribute.

Second, show authentic empathy. Observe needs. Respond clearly and visibly.

Third, anticipate reactions. Theory of mind allows you to imagine how your exchange will be valued as beneficial.

Fourth, repeat and respect transaction patterns. How, when, and what. Trust is built by consistency and tradition.

These are not soft skills. They are evolved tendencies refined over hundreds of thousands of years. Every soldier in Maurice’s army carried the neural adaptions that could express trust - or distrust.

Maurice Through an Evolutionary Lens

At the critical moment of 602 along the northern banks of the Danube, Maurice failed to show trustful behaviors in the eyes of cold and starving troops.

He was absent, a distant authority rather than a visible partner. He ignored the suffering of his troops and misjudged their likely reaction. He broke longstanding cultural expectations of payment and winter return.

To the army’s evolved social brain, Maurice shifted categories. He moved from trusted partner to villain. Once that reclassification occurs, outcomes change quickly.

The mutiny was political, but the trigger was biological.

Trust in the Modern Workplace

Modern collapses follow similar patterns. When leaders break implicit exchange agreements, show indifference to team stress, disappear from shared experience, or violate established norms, trust erodes rapidly.

Teams fragment. Startups implode. Customers withdraw.

By contrast, organizations that scale trust through transparency, empathy, and consistent exchange expand faster and endure longer. Trust reduces transaction costs. It increases coordination speed. It multiplies creative exchange.

The Foundation Layer

“Trust your gut” is a common expression of business leaders, especially with people-based decisions.

At General Electric, Jack Welch made final hiring decisions, after considering all other available metrics, based on ‘gut feel.’

Warren Buffet describes getting a ‘feel of integrity’ from a manager.

Sheryl Sandberg said, “Your gut tells you something in an interview - don’t ignore it.”

The Working Origins timeline shows why words like gut and feel are synonymous with trust.

Trust behaviors emerged long before we had language, and long before belief systems, agile cultures, agriculture, education, or written laws.

The trust behaviors of Homo erectus remain within us today, but have been modified by many following adaptations. Gut or trust feelings have little value by themselves.

Phocas, the man who killed emperor Maurice, is a good example of the limitations of gut instincts. He was named emperor after Maurice. But Phocas had none of Maurice’s broad leadership skills. He was willful, capricious, harsh with others, and could not maintain lawful order. He quickly alienated court officials, his provincial governors, and potential allies like Khosrow II of Persia. Within two years he had met the same fate as Maurice.

Takeaways

There are four key lessons for our Workplace today.

First is for business leaders. They should ask the questions that Maurice did not. Recognize any durable patterns of trust in the business network of partners, suppliers, customers, and teams. These should be valued and protected. Then ask where trust may be eroding from the friction of broken promises or one-sided exchange.

The second lesson is for each of us. Trust is not just a leadership concern. We build our careers through trust. Promotions, sales, alliances, partnerships, and even hire-fire decisions are shaped by visible patterns of identity, reliability, and mutual gain. Each of us may leverage the biology of trust to strengthen our most valued relationships. Stay present and true to your role. Observe and meet their needs. Maintain a reliable pattern.

The third lesson is that modern business tools amplify both trust and its absence. Video calls, short-form text, chat, AI agents, and labor-saving automation reduce physical presence — one of the oldest trust signals we possess. We must compensate intentionally.

A fourth lesson is that every scam or con exploits the deep origins of trust. They hijack identity, empathy, patterns, and beneficial exchange — instincts that evolved long before contracts or cybersecurity.

That’s it - the Working Origins of Trust & Trade.

In the next post, we’ll move forward along the ESTIMATE timeline to the rise of instruction and iconic language — the adaptation that allowed trust to scale beyond sight and repetition.

Until then, remember the Working Origins motto:

Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

Underlying Science

As a supplement to this Trust & Trade post, here is an overview of underlying science. As mentioned earlier, Working Origins builds insights using three primary fields.

First is biological science. Paleoanthropology, DNA molecular analysis, the new and emerging paleoproteomics, and other fields give insight to ancient hominins generally, including Homo erectus of 1.5 million to 750 thousand years ago. Additionally, endocasts and reconstructions of fossilized cranial cavities give evidence of H erectus brain growth and neural region development.

Second is archeology. Paleolithic archaeology describes the Oldowan and Acheulean tool industries and Homo erectus cultures. Lithic analysis gives insight to tool techniques, associated skills, and source materials. Cognitive archaeology then infers mental capacities, planning, symmetry, and abstract thinking.

Third are the behavioral sciences. These act as an interdisciplinary bridge—linking material cultures of tools, symbols, and skills to inferred brain function and structure. These include cognitive archaeology, paleoneurology and developmental neurology. Such research guides our understanding of the Homo erectus cultures and behaviors over these long periods of time.

Hello. This is Chris Gray. At the time of this writing, I live in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. My product development career has included work at Honeywell, Microtest, EMC, KVH, and Cogneti.

Alongside the technical work, I’ve kept a steady focus on a basic question of teamwork: Why do people work the way we do?

The Big Idea

Working Origins examines our human origins as best revealed by modern science. Eight key workplace behaviors, such as social learning and iconic language, are highlighted on a timeline.

We’ll look for the cultural foundations of each behavioral adaptation.

The big idea of Working Origins is pretty simple:

To encourage a key workplace behavior in modern teams, build its cultural foundation

Timeline Model

The Working Origins timeline shows eight cultural foundations that shaped how humans learned to work together. Each foundation encouraged important workplace behaviors that remain recognizable today.

Together, these markers form the acronym ESTIMATE:

• E — Emotions, states, and drives (~3 million years ago)

• S — Social learning (~2 million years ago)

• T — Trust and trade (~1 million years ago)

• I — Instruction and language (~750 thousand years ago)

• M — Myth and mediation (~350 thousand years ago)

• A — Agile cultures (~70 thousand years ago)

• T — Techne and material intelligence (~12 thousand years ago)

• E — Education and writing (~5 thousand years ago)

Each marker identifies a cultural foundation together with the workplace behaviors it helped encourage.

Purpose

Working Origins has two objectives.

First, to make our human past easier to understand with a simple timeline model.

Second, to translate cultural insights into practical leadership for modern teams.

Audience

Working Origins is written for working people—across roles, industries, and levels of experience. This includes church groups, sports teams, gardening clubs, or businesses.

While there is a focus on the business workplace, the leadership lessons apply broadly.

Working Origins Motto

Each post ends with the Working Origins motto: Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.

This reminds us that working together has shaped human development from the very beginning. Roughly 3 million years ago, early humans used tools to make a better living. They passed the key skills to their children.

That is the beginning of culture, and in a very real sense, it is the beginning of the workplace.

Science

Working Origins draws from three primary fields of study.

Human biology, including genetics, cranial development, and paleoneurology, helps explain how our bodies and brains evolved over time.

Archaeology and related disciplines reveal how people lived—through tools, art, and material culture across time and place.

Behavioral sciences act as an interdisciplinary bridge—linking material culture (tools, symbols, skills) to inferred brain function and structure. These include cognitive archaeology, paleoneurology and developmental psychology. These researchers help us understand how culture shapes behavior—how we think, feel, and act.

Working Origins builds on these disciplines to explore how workplace culture can encourage the expression of important human behaviors.