Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Most empires have found it alarmingly easy to put down rebellions. In general, they have been toppled only by external invasion or by a split within the ruling elite. Conversely, conquered peoples don’t have a very good record of freeing themselves from their imperial overlords. Most have remained subjugated for hundreds of years. Typically, they have been slowly digested by the conquering empire, until their distinct cultures fizzled out. For example, when the Western Roman Empire finally fell to invading Germanic tribes in 476 AD, the Numantians, Arverni, Helvetians, Samnites, Lusitanians, Umbrians, Etruscans and hundreds of other forgotten peoples whom the Romans conquered centuries earlier did not emerge from the empire’s eviscerated carcass like Jonah from the belly of the great fish. None of them were left. The biological descendants of the people who had identified themselves as members of those nations, who had spoken their languages, worshipped their gods and told their myths and legends, now thought, spoke and worshipped as Romans.