Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Can you believe that Homo Sapiens, once a species with no significance, skyrocketed to the top of the food chain because of our abilities to imagine fiction, bullshit and gossip?

Yuval Noah Harari suggests that all animals have language, but our language is fundamentally different-- We bullshit. Only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touch or smelled. Legends, myths, gods, and religions appeared with the Cognitive revolution. Many animals can communicate “Careful! A lion!”, but Sapiens acquired the ability to say “The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe!” Sapiens can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, and the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians. This ability to speak about fictions enabled humans to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. 

Ants and bees can also work together, but in a very rigid manner. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate flexibly but only with intimate members. Sapiens ability to cooperate in flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers gave us the ability to rule the world. That's how ants ended up eating our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and laboratories.

If you are not easily offended, I highly recommend reading this bold, provocative book about the brief history of the ecological serial killers. 

"Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as a special set part of animals, an orphan bereft of family. However, it is our current exclusivity, without multi-species is peculiar." (Sapiens, 2011)

In fact, 10,000 years ago there were at least six types of human beings: Soloensis, Rudolfensis, Erectus, Neanderthals, Floresiensis, Denisovan. It is a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a straight line of descent. The linear visualization gave a flawed impression that at any particular moment only one type of human inhabited the earth, and that all earlier species were merely older models of human nowadays. Other than our ancestor, Sapiens, all the other human species vanished from Earth. 

How did we drove all other human species into extinction?
How did we drove other animals into extinction?
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance?
How did we come to cruelly locked up other animals? 
Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? 
How did we come to believe in religion and human rights?
Why did we experience the agricultural revolution when it made us worse off?
How did we enter the scientific revolution?

Some expert criticizes the credibility of the events mentioned in this book. I guess as readers we’ll never know. However, it is great to be offered with new perspectives.