It begins with a friendly hug. Human head to human head. The twitch of antennae, as six hooked claws creep down a strand of hair to the scalp. First, just a tickle. Each day, the hitchhiker lays ten nits, hatching into blood-sucking nymphs. Soon, a tiny army of bugs feasts on your flesh.

Lice are an itchy nuisance as old as humanity. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest sentence written in the first alphabet on an ivory comb made around 1700 BC. The Canaanite script reads: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

It is a "very human" message, says Israeli archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel. At the dawn of civilisation in the city of Lachish, a Bronze Age man tried to rid himself of nits. It reminds us that we have been at war with bugs for millennia.

The world teems with these critters. There are over a billion insects for every human on earth. A million species, 75% of all animals. They wear formidable body armour and make deadly toxins and acid bombs.¹ Some live in colonies as big as countries.²

Insects were the first animals to take flight, 400 million years before an aeronaut climbed into a hot air balloon.³ Humans reached the South Pole long after the wingless midge had already conquered Antarctica. So does this Bronze Age comb confirm we are only guests on a planet ruled by bugs?

Head-lice are not deadly, but body-lice are. They carry typhus and have wiped out entire armies, like Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. Fleas spread the Black Death that killed 75 million people in the 14th Century. But our greatest predator is the mosquito, responsible for almost half of all deaths in human history.

When they are not spreading disease, bugs are causing chaos. A swarm of 80 million locusts will destroy crops equal to the food eaten by 35,000 people a day. Termites eat walls, silverfish eat books. "Bugs are not going to inherit the earth," said entomologist Thomas Eisner. "They own it now."

But do they? Under a microscope, scientists found the outer membranes of young lice in the comb's teeth. Canaanites used tools and language to defeat their tiny foes. Humans rule the world because they are the only species to develop culture.

This ingenuity built empires. Ancient China discovered how to farm silkworms to make a luxurious fabric sold to Europe. Beekeepers have smuggled honey from hives for over 4,500 years. Chemists make powerful insecticides to destroy harmful bugs, whilst as many as two billion people eat insects in their diet.⁴

An often-repeated myth is that cockroaches are so hard to kill they would survive a nuclear apocalypse. In reality, like many insects, roaches live off waste. Without us and other animals, they would starve.

Humans and bugs co-exist in ecosystems. More than 40% of insect species are in decline, including the bees and butterflies that pollinate our crops.⁵ Whether we love or loathe them, our future depends on a creeping crawling world all around us.

Yes: The world does not revolve around us. Insects existed long before humans and will survive the collapse of civilisation. They evolve resistance to pesticides and will always outnumber us.

No: Human-caused climate change and environmental damage are destroying insect populations. If they once ruled the world, we have stolen the crown. The problem is we need them for our own survival.

Or... Life is a complex system. No one species rules the world. The comb was an ancient weapon in a long war on bugs. But we can also see our relationship with insects as a partnership of a shared Earth.