Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

As the Agricultural Revolution proceeded, farmers started worrying and planning for the future. They worried about and prepared for weather changes and timing, floods, crop yield, and food storage for lean years. Peasants labored to support and feed not only themselves but also the elite who governed and ruled over them.

Myths and imagined orders dictate much of what we believe and direct what we do, whether our status in life is determined by our position in the social hierarchy or our individuality. Inside these imagined orders, we dedicate our lives to our legacy, our “pyramid,” just like the ancient Egyptians. These pyramids change from one culture and time period to the next. 

Each society or empire follows an imagined order that is supposed to make all members cooperate in a successful way. This order takes the form of laws, social caste, currency, and religion. If a single person leaves the group or disagrees with an aspect of the order or myth, there is no effect. However, if a person influences enough other members, a new myth must evolve from the previously held beliefs.

The human brain is very good at remembering, retrieving, and relating biological and social information. Our brains sort information about our location and relationships with relative ease. Record keeping is more difficult, especially when large groups of people need to remember information regarding trade and property.

The initial purpose of writing was to record numbers that our brains could not manage efficiently. The first methods of record keeping did not involve writing at all; the ancient Incas used a system of knots and colored strings to record words and numbers. Sometime before the ninth century AD, the Arabs adapted from the Hindus a partial script of digits 0 to 9. This partial script remains in use today as the most prevalent language encompassing entire fields of knowledge such as engineering, physics, and artificial intelligence.

Social hierarchies and inequalities based on race or caste systems are human inventions, and there is often little evidence as to how they came into being. They are often the result of ancient conquerors putting forth the idea that gods had ordained them to be in a superior position. Discrimination often worsens, not improves, over time. Most poor people remain poor not because they are unintelligent or immoral, but because they were born into poor families and do not have the opportunities afforded to rich people. Likewise, the rich are so because they were born into rich families.

The most prevalent type of inequality and hierarchy is based on gender. The societal superiority of men over women is almost universal. Why men are more valued is not clear, though three theories are in play: muscle power, or the idea that men have relied on their superior physical strength to force women into submission; masculine aggression, which theorizes that men more readily engage in violence and thus maintain their dominance; and patriarchal genes, which points to the different survival and reproduction strategies that males and female have evolved and suggests that the masculine genes that survived belonged to the most aggressive and competitive men. Harari finds all three theories unconvincing.

Other gender-based inequalities, such as homosexuality, are also of human manufacture. If a behavior is possible biologically, it is therefore natural; our conception of behaviors as “natural” or “unnatural” comes from Christian theology and is not biologically sound.