You’re speaking as though humanity is the very first example of a species that reproduced a lot, but it’s always been the case that some species reproduced more than others and left more descendant species—the ancestor of mammals or eukaryotes, for example. This force has been constant and significant for as long as evolution has been a thing(more selection happens at the within-species level, sure, but that doesn’t mean between-species selection is completely unprecedented)
Within an organism there are various forms of viral genes which reproduce themselves largely at the expense of cells, organs, or the whole organism. A species is actually composed recursively of groups with geographically varying gene distributions and some
genes can grow within local populations at the expense of that local population. But that is counteracted by various mechanisms selecting at larger scales, and all of this is happening at many levels simultaneously well beyond that of just gene and species. A species decomposes fractally geographically into many diverse subgroups with some but limited gene flow (slowing the spread of faster ‘defecting’ viral like genes) and which are all in various forms of competition over time, but still can interbreed and thus are part of the same species.
You’re speaking as though humanity is the very first example of a species that reproduced a lot, but it’s always been the case that some species reproduced more than others and left more descendant species—the ancestor of mammals or eukaryotes, for example. This force has been constant and significant for as long as evolution has been a thing(more selection happens at the within-species level, sure, but that doesn’t mean between-species selection is completely unprecedented)
Within an organism there are various forms of viral genes which reproduce themselves largely at the expense of cells, organs, or the whole organism. A species is actually composed recursively of groups with geographically varying gene distributions and some genes can grow within local populations at the expense of that local population. But that is counteracted by various mechanisms selecting at larger scales, and all of this is happening at many levels simultaneously well beyond that of just gene and species. A species decomposes fractally geographically into many diverse subgroups with some but limited gene flow (slowing the spread of faster ‘defecting’ viral like genes) and which are all in various forms of competition over time, but still can interbreed and thus are part of the same species.