When Byrd identified the Carolinians as residents of “Lubberland,” hedrew upon a familiar English folktale that featured one “Lawrence Lazy,”born in the county of Sloth near the town of Neverwork.

We emerged from the apelike human phase thanks to fire and language. Together, those advantages made us apex predators: we could learn to hunt and forage from our elders and then gain more energy by cooking the food we gathered. After 200,000 years some of us still live that way, but it was what Lewis and Maslin call a “progress trap.” After modern humans left Africa, they effectively exterminated most of the larger mammals they encountered: the mammoths, giant sloths, sabre-tooth tigers, and countless others. In effect, they overshot their resources.