Reminder of humanity's evolutionary infancy

More than a dozen skinned cats hang on hooks at the Yulin Meat Festival in China. The People's Republic also has a massive dog meat trade, with as many as 20 million canines slaughtered annually for human consumption. /Reuters image

On the timeline of human evolution, civilization has existed for the blink of an eye.

There may be no better illustration of humanity's relatively brief development of civilization than the Yulin Meat Festival. Humane Society International has documented this horrific celebration of the dog-and-cat meat trade in China. But if anyone wants to confirm the existence of this extreme barbarism in the 21st century, all they have to do is Google search images of the festival. Warning: These photographs are unbearable if you have a semblance of a conscience.

Depending on which distant ancestral species you pick for homo sapiens, the human brain is rooted in an evolutionary timeline about 3 million years deep. Humans have been developing the trappings of civilization such as written language for about 40,000 years, which is a figure that generously considers cave paintings as a form of written communication. In other words, humanity and its bipedal forebearers have spent 99 percent of their time on Earth as savages.

The mass slaughter of humans' primary animal companions in China--and the rest of humanity turning a blind eye to the practice--reflects who we are as a species. It is not a pretty picture.