Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.

Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.

The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.

‘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.

Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realise this possibility.