Ever since ancient Greece, ants and their form of cohabitation have served as a model and comparison for humankind and the way we organize our societies. The image, however, is extremely flexible and can be used to model republican, altruistic and totalitarian ideas of community alike. In this study on the history of knowledge, Niels Werber examines the fascination of this comparison and presents its past use, the shadow it casts and its key functions. What is observed among ants, he finds, provides answers to sociological and anthropological questions – and beyond these disciplines, definitions of human beings and the society we live in.
