Reflecting on the ant"s antique wisdoms, while prophesying its "ample future", Shapley entertained this point in 1924. Humans, comparatively, are an inexperienced species, he wrote. "Moreover, we are hampered with brains. We have mentality to burn, and many do burn it, at both ends." Shapley worried our "abnormal mentalities" (particularly, our predilection for technological invention) might soon get the best of us. Then the Earth"s future will be inherited by the "conservative cockroach", nesting within the "fossilised skull" of some "extinct primate".