At first, it's just a tickle. The twitch of a feeler. Six hooked claws creep down a strand of hair to the scalp. The parasite lays sticky eggs that hatch into blood-sucking lice. Soon, a tiny army of bugs feasts on flesh.

Archaeologists have found the oldest sentence written on an ivory comb made around 1700 BC. The words read: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard."

It is a "very human" message, says archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel. At the dawn of civilisation, a Bronze Age man had an itchy head. It reminds us that we have been at war with bugs for millennia.

The world teems with critters. There are over a billion insects for every human, 75% of all animals. They have tough body armour, deadly poisons and acid bombs.¹ Some live in colonies as big as countries.²

Insects were the first animals to fly, 400 million years before a man got into a hot air balloon.³ Humans reached the South Pole long after the wingless midge conquered Antarctica. So does this 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 destroyed armies, like Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. Fleas spread the Black Death, which killed 75 million people. Our greatest killer is the mosquito, responsible for almost half of all deaths in human history.

A swarm of 80 million locusts will destroy crops that should feed 35,000 people for a day. 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 that humans use tools to control insects. We rule the world because we are the only species to develop culture.

Ancient China learned how to farm silkworms to make beautiful 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 pollinating our crops.⁵ Love them or loathe them, our future depends on the bugs all around us.

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.