Six hooked claws creep down a stand of hair. The head-louse lays its eggs. Soon, an army of bugs is sucking your blood.

Archaeologists have found the oldest sentence written on an ivory comb. The words read: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

Four thousand years ago, a Bronze Age man had an itchy head. It reminds us we have been at war with bugs for a long time.

There are over a billion insects for every human. They have body armour, deadly poisons and acid bombs.¹ Some live in colonies as big as countries.²

Insects first flew 400 million years before a man got into a hot air balloon.³ Men reached Antarctica long after the wingless midge. So does this comb show we are only guests on a planet ruled by bugs?

Some lice are deadly. Body lice carry typhus and have destroyed entire armies. Fleas spread the Black Death, which killed 75 million people. Mosquitoes caused almost half of all deaths in human history.

Locusts destroy crops, termites eat walls, silverfish eat books. "Bugs are not going to inherit the earth," said insect expert Thomas Eisner. "They own it now."

But do they? The comb shows humans use tools to control insects. We rule the world because we are the only species with culture.

China learned how to farm silkworms to make cloth. Beekeepers have taken honey from hives for over 4,500 years. Chemists make powerful insecticides to destroy harmful pests. As many as two billion people eat insects.⁴

It is a myth that cockroaches would survive a nuclear apocalypse. Like many insects, they live off waste. Without us and other animals, they would starve.

And more than 40% of insects are in decline, including the bees and butterflies that pollinate crops.⁵ Love them or hate them, our future depends on bugs.

Yes: The world does not revolve around us. Insects existed long before humans and will survive the collapse of civilisation.

No: Human-caused climate change is destroying insect populations. They once ruled the world, but now we are wiping them out.

Or... Life is a complex system. No one species rules the world. We must work with insects and share the planet.