Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

elites.

The Agricultural Revolution was history’s...

These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

blight.

arthritis

hernias.

This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.

Natufian

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once

Humanity’s search for an easier life released immense forces of change that transformed the world in ways nobody envisioned or wanted.

Stonehenge

Faustian

cattle,

curtailed.

mutilating

castration

mutilation

suckling,

This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution.

perdition.

infiltrate

The stress of farming had far-reaching consequences. It was the foundation of large-scale political and social systems.

surpluses

gladiatorial

Hammurabi

Babylonians;

coercion.

acquiesce.

humanities

the myths of romantic consumerism.

charades.

progeny.

quipus

prophecies

bureaucracy,

The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.

supremacists

caste

perpetuated

subjugating

eternal

fabrication

revulsion

attendant

plantations

droves.

expedient.

paucity

lynching.

‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others.