A reassessment of the "hard-steps" model for the evolution of intelligent life

Abstract

According to the "hard-steps" model, the origin of humanity required "successful passage through a number of intermediate steps" (so-called "hard" or "critical" steps) that were intrinsically improbable with respect to the total time available for biological evolution on Earth. This model similarly predicts that technological life analogous to human life on Earth is "exceedingly rare" in the universe. Here, we critically reevaluate the core assumptions of the hard-steps model in light of recent advances in the Earth and life sciences. Specifically, we advance a potential alternative model where there are no hard steps, and evolutionary novelties (or singularities) required for human origins can be explained via mechanisms outside of intrinsic improbability. Furthermore, if Earth's surface environment was initially inhospitable not only to human life, but also to certain key intermediate steps in human evolution (e.g., the origin of eukaryotic cells, multicellular animals), then the "delay" in the appearance of humans can be best explained through the sequential opening of new global environmental windows of habitability over Earth history, with humanity arising relatively quickly once the right conditions were established. In this co-evolutionary (or geobiological) scenario, humans did not evolve "early" or "late" with respect to the total lifespan of the biosphere, but "on time."