Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

European explore-and-conquer expeditions are so familiar to us that we tend to overlook just how extraordinary they were. Nothing like them had ever happened before. Long-distance campaigns of conquest are not a natural undertaking. Throughout history most human societies were so busy with local conflicts and neighbourhood quarrels that they never considered exploring and conquering distant lands. Most great empires extended their control only over their immediate neighbourhood – they reached far-flung lands simply because their neighbourhood kept expanding. Thus the Romans conquered Etruria in order to defend Rome (c.350–300 bc). They then conquered the Po Valley in order to defend Etruria (c.200 bc). They subsequently conquered Provence to defend the Po Valley (c.120 bc), Gaul to defend Provence (c.50 bc), and Britain in order to defend Gaul (c. ad 50). It took them 400 years to get from Rome to London. In 350 bc, no Roman would have conceived of sailing directly to Britain and conquering it. Occasionally