Humans are the most intelligent beings this planet has ever produced. But how is it that we find ourselves faced with an existential crisis that threatens to overwhelm us?

Leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe investigate what DNA can tell us about how we got where we are and what our future might be. They show how the first humans were defeated again and again and suffered fatal setbacks, and how Homo sapiens succeeded in conquering continents, overcoming natural borders, and bringing other species under its control. But the genetic blueprint that enabled us to get to the place where we are today had one flaw: it didn't factor in planetary boundaries. Now that we are approaching those boundaries for the first time after millions of years of evolution, an urgent question arises: can we learn to live within the planetary limits, or are we doomed by our DNA to continue to expand, consume, and absorb the resources around us to the point of exhaustion, consigning ourselves and other species to extinction?

While the looming climate crisis does not augur well for humanity's capacity to adapt to the new situation in which it finds itself, we are not at the mercy of our DNA—or at least we don't have to be. But can we harness the lessons of the past to survive the present?