Specialisation encouraged innovation

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley on extrasomatic evolution. Page 7.

By exchanging, human beings discovered 'the division of labour', the specialisation of efforts and talents for mutual gain. It would at first have seemed an insiginificant thing, missed by passing primatologists had they driven their time machines to the moment it was just starting. It would have seemed much less interesting than the ecology, hierarchy and supersistitions of the species. But some ape-men had begun exchanging food or tools with others in such a way that both partners to the exchange were better off, and both were becoming more specialised.

Specialisation encouraged innovation, because it encouraged the investment of time in a tool-making tool. That saved time, and prosperity is simply time saved, which is proportional to the division of labour. The more human beings diversififed as consumers and specialised as producers, and the more they then exchanged, the better they have been, are and will be. And the good news is that there is no inevitable end to this process.