Origins: How we became human

Motivated by recently reading Against the Grain, which provides a sweeping yet non-mainstream view of human civilization and the rise of population centers, I decided to revisit the boardgame Origins: How We Became Human. Games designed by Phil Eklund have a learning curve, but they’re immersive, interesting, and chock-full of science – you might say they’re very nerdy. They also introduce me to non-mainstream views in an intriguing way, even if I don’t always agree with them. That’s certainly true of Origins.

 

I wrote an early review at the BoardGameGeek, after I finally finished a game (without the expansion) which took me four tries. In today’s review, I will be self-plagiarizing from that old review over ten years ago, now that I’ve played over thirty games, and have much more experience with it. The “living rules” (last updated 2012) are an improvement over the original, and my recent games use all their optional suggestions. This game should not be confused with its descendant Bios Origins (see my review here) which borrows many of the themes and mechanisms, but in my opinion is quite a different playing experience.

 

Origins traces the development of humans from hunter-gatherer times (Turn 1 starts roughly 120,000 years ago) to the present. It’s an audacious and ambitious game. How do you gamify human evolution? Eklund breaks it down into four Eras. In Era I, the Age of Instinct, new brain developments proceed as instinct progressively turns into intention. Era II, the Bicameral Age, owes its controversial ideas to the Julian Jaynes about how humans functioned with sort of a “split” brain (I’m simplifying greatly). Era III is the Age of Faith, with the rise of religion and its many-sided effects. The base game ends here, but the expansion allows you entry into Era IV, the Age of Reason, into the Renaissance and the so-called Modern Age.

 

In line with what you might guess about evolution, Origins is a difficult and unforgiving game, with a fascinating theme and innovative game mechanics to match. Each player starts out as one of the five possible proto-species (Archaic Homo Sapiens, Cro-Magnon, Hobbit, Neanderthal, Peking Man) in their respective locations on a world map. In Era I, each player has a Brain Map card that has different areas associated with certain instincts (Social Skills, Natural History Knowledge, Technological Knowledge, Language). Each player starts with one or two of these instincts, and progresses by developing the other instincts. This is done mainly through playing cards that allow “removal of Brain Units” that initially block these instincts. Each of these instincts has several uses that permit the player to perform certain actions or acquire certain advancements. Once all the Brain Units are unblocked, one can progress into Era II, the Bicameral Age. Advancements in knowledge and infrastructure allow one to progress into subsequent eras, particularly via the ability to use Energy. (I particularly like this as I view biological evolution as finding ways to transduce more energy.)

Each Era has an associated card deck. Cards are needed for advances in infrastructure and also to satisfy the victory conditions of the game. Each player has a different set of victory conditions. Players try to maximize two out of four areas: Information, Culture, Administration or Specialists (called “Elders” in the game). The first three are acquired by bidding for appropriate Public Cards. The Specialists are important in this regard – the player with the most Specialists often is able to outbid the others for the best cards. However, specialists are only useful when they are Producers rather than Consumers. An important part of the game is managing when and how to use your Specialists and cycling them between the two states Producer and Consumer.

 

The picture above shows the player mat for Cro-Magnon Man (homo sapiens) in a late stage of the game. The top left shows five elders (two producers, three consumers). They have reached Era IV, has Innovation Level 3 and Population Level 2 which indicate an aging society with not too many young people. Public cards are shown at the bottom. They score  for Information cards (Accounting Tokens) and Culture cards (Megalith monument and Advertising). Below is the player mat for Peking Man (homo erectus) who eventually won this game. There are seven elders (all producers) with some who are foreign workers (non-red cubes). With an innovation of 3 and a population of 3, there are many young and old people and this is a very productive society. You can see many Public Cards here.

 

Besides advancing through cardplay, each player will expand their tribe and start to occupy larger tracts of inhabitable area across the globe. They build cities, cultivate crops, domesticate animals, and mine resources. Players soon encroach on each other’s areas as they expand sometimes resulting in armed conflict. Advances in metallurgy aid the war efforts. Advances in maritime infrastructure allows the crossing of seas and oceans. There can also global climate swings. An ice age allows the crossing of shallow straits but it can turn into a tropical age and flood continental shelves. Desert and jungle climates turn swaths of land into uninhabitable areas unless the necessary advancements are made in Energy and immunology. In line with its nerdiness, the rulebook Appendix has detailed descriptions of Dansgaard-Oeschger and Milankovitch Cycles, but a successful playing of the game does not require detailed knowledge about these things. They’re just icing on the cake for the player who really wants to be immersed in the theme. Here’s a pictures of a third of the mapboard. Descendants of the Hobbits (homo floresiensis) are in North and Central America, while Peking Man’s descendants are in the South.
 

The advancements I described above are divided into five categories: Footprint, Metallurgy, Maritime, Energy and Immunology. Players gain advantages with each advancement, and a fair chunk of the game involves players trying to move along each of the five tracks. Some of these steps are reasonably easy to achieve, but there are some huge bottlenecks where the order in which one tries to advance is crucial. Playing certain advancement cards allows you to move forward. So can domesticating or mining. You can also make infrastructure/specialist exchanges with other players. It took me a few games to figure out what are the best ways to do this, and if I’m teaching new players, it is very important to help point out what some of these optimum pathways are – it’s not clear at all to most newcomers. Below is a picture showing the Advancement tracks.

 

There’s a fair bit of luck in the game – die rolls are used to determine how the climate changes (which can affect areas of the map being inaccessible and units cut off from others) and if certain advancements can be successfully made. A string of bad rolls can really setback a player’s tribe. This part of the game feels very unforgiving, but I think realistically matches the theme. I feel the same way about Bios Genesis, a Phil Eklund game where I was a chemistry consultant – a great way to use my knowledge of origin-of-life chemistry! It is a long game and there is a learning curve, so unless you have some dedicated players willing to spend 3-5 hours, the game will not hit the table.

But is it fun? Yes. I think it’s excellent, now that I’ve gotten the hang of it over many games. Figuring out how best to advance your tribe, watching your brain encephalize as you “free your mind!”, domesticating plants and animals, mining for resources, watching how the climate isolates populations, balancing your population growth with your number of specialists while trying not to fall into Chaos (entering a Dark Age) when you don’t want to – all this makes for a very intriguing game. There’s lots of thinking and planning involved, but the best-laid plans (like life) sometimes don’t work out. Overall, I think the theme meshes well with the game mechanics. The pace of the game has a nice variation to it, starting slow and accelerating at the end as new discoveries catapult the human species into today!