Today, I'd like to discuss the renowned work "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.
Many who have read this book describe it as a transformative "masterpiece."
In fewer than 500 pages, the book spans from early human societies to the 21st century, offering a thought-provoking global perspective on human development.
The author, Yuval Noah Harari, holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Oxford. Despite his academic background, this book is far from dry like scholarly texts; it is exceptionally well-written and easily accessible.
Within the book, there are intricate concepts simplified by the author into easily comprehensible sentences, leading to profound insights. Unlike some other works, it doesn't indulge in complexity. Even middle school students can grasp its contents effortlessly.
The title of the book is grand: "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind." Just like its title suggests, the content is expansive, narrating the evolution of Homo sapiens from primitive apes to modern humans.
The book is filled with original viewpoints and arguments, but due to space limitations, I can't cover everything. Today, I want to focus on one of my favorite and highly acclaimed core theories from the book, the "Cognitive Revolution."
To start, the author poses a question almost everyone asks: How did humans rise to the top of the Earth's hierarchy from being ordinary animals?
This question is the focal point of the book's exploration. The author provides a simple explanation: the "Cognitive Revolution." To put it simply, humans can tell stories, and we can use language, art, writing, and other forms to transmit these stories, enabling them to spread far and wide, believed and accepted by countless strangers.
You might wonder, what's the significance of storytelling? Patience, and read on to find out.
First, it's important to understand that only humans tell stories on Earth. Here, "humans" refer to "Homo sapiens."
Darwin's theory of evolution tells us that the same species, when exposed to different environments and accompanied by occasional genetic changes, will evolve in various directions.
There are ten species of bears and over a hundred species of cats. However, in today's world, there's only one species of humans, Homo sapiens. This is highly unusual.
In reality, between about 2 million and 10,000 years ago, multiple human species coexisted on Earth. Apart from Homo sapiens, there were Neanderthals, Denisovans, and others.
These diverse human species lived in different regions, possessed unique evolutionary traits and lifestyles. Without unforeseen events, they might have coexisted with us till today, similar to how other species and their relatives did.
However, the unforeseen did occur. Around 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens, previously confined to East Africa, rapidly expanded to the Arabian Peninsula and soon spread across Eurasia. The author proposes a grim hypothesis: this expansion came with brutal massacres, as indigenous populations quickly went extinct upon the arrival of Homo sapiens.
According to the author, this gruesome slaughter continued until about 10,000 years ago, leaving only Homo sapiens as the sole human species on Earth. In other words, during humanity's rise to dominance, we didn't just triumph over other species; we conquered other "humans" too.
What helped Homo sapiens stand out from animals and other human species was the cognitive leap. This advantage in cognition allowed Homo sapiens to transform, spread across the globe, develop cultures, and eventually shape today's human society.
However, no one knows precisely how this occurred or why it was exclusive to Homo sapiens. Yet, it did happen. Harari refers to this monumental shift 70,000 years ago as the "Cognitive Revolution."
The Cognitive Revolution brought enormous changes to human life, with its most crucial aspect being the emergence of new forms of communication. Harari suggests that after the Cognitive Revolution, human language developed a unique function: discussing fictional things.
In primitive societies, a person's knowledge was limited to their immediate environment and acquaintances. In essence, their cognition was confined to what they could see and experience. Now, Homo sapiens could narrate stories about things never seen or heard, creating nonexistent entities through imagination and describing them in various ways to be understood and believed by others. The ability to fabricate stories fundamentally transformed human cognition.
Compared to merely describing tangible objects as before, the ability to create fictional stories represented a significant breakthrough. With the ability to conjure nonexistent entities, myths, religions, cultures, systems, and institutions came into being. When numerous individuals shared and adhered to these fabricated entities, an immense force emerged. Strangers, united by the same story, shared common beliefs, enabling large-scale cooperation that quickly surpassed other species.
The skill to construct fictional stories granted Homo sapiens unprecedented capacity for massive-scale collaboration. Numerous unfamiliar individuals, once they believed in the same story, could collaborate effectively. While it might sound absurd, throughout history, the foundation for large-scale human cooperation has always been some form of collectively imagined fictional narrative.
In today's society, what we take for granted—countries, laws, businesses, religions—are essentially fabrications. Objectively speaking, they don't physically exist like a mountain or the changing seasons.
These so-called legal systems, financial systems, national concepts exist only in our minds; they are forms of storytelling. Yet, once people believe in them and willingly adhere, they become real, becoming forces capable of influencing the tangible world.
For instance, the foundation of a country is its national narrative. Two unrelated individuals, if both genuinely believe in the existence of the nation, can collaborate to build and advance it.
The basis of trade lies in the story of money. Only when many agree that printed paper holds value can modern trade occur.
Religious institutions are rooted in religious narratives. Two strangers, because they both believe in the records of holy texts, can share the worship of the same deity.
However, these concepts are solely products of human invention and storytelling. Apart from existing within shared human imagination, they have no physical presence. There are no countries, no money, and no deities in the world. In other words, they are not objective reality but imagined reality. Hence, the author argues that the true force that can leverage unlimited resources and change the world isn't money or capital—because money and capital are also human inventions—it's the power of storytelling.
Before the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens were like chimpanzees, relying on instinct to maintain small groups. When groups grew too large, social order crumbled, and division occurred.
After the Cognitive Revolution, however, Homo sapiens could rally large groups through storytelling, facilitating flexible cooperation. This broke the limitations on group size, becoming the key to Homo sapiens' success. They could organize and assemble groups of hundreds or even massive armies.
Other species or human subspecies lacking storytelling ability and effective cooperation mechanisms had no hope of competing against Homo sapiens.
Homo sapiens initially triumphed over other human species due to adaptable large-scale cooperation. Later, they expanded this cooperation, transcending tribal limits and creating towns with thousands of residents, empires with millions of inhabitants, gradually reaching where we are today.