Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Though originally adapted to hunting large game in the Arctic, they soon adjusted to an amazing variety of climates and ecosystems. Descendants of the Siberians settled the thick forests of the eastern United States, the swamps of the Mississippi Delta, the deserts of Mexico and steaming jungles of Central America. Some made their homes in the river world of the Amazon basin, others struck roots in Andean mountain valleys or the open pampas of Argentina. And all this happened in a mere millennium or two! By 10,000 BC, humans already inhabited the most southern point in America, the island of Tierra del Fuego at the continent’s southern tip. The human blitzkrieg across America testifies to the incomparable ingenuity and the unsurpassed adaptability of Homo sapiens. No other animal had ever moved into such a huge variety of radically different habitats so quickly, everywhere using virtually the same genes.6

blitzkreig