100,000 years ago, at least six species of human inhabited the earth. Today
there is just one. Us. Homo Sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle
for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and
kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to
trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and
consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In
Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very
first humans to walk the earth to the radical -- and sometimes devastating --
breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions.
Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology, and economics, he
explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the
animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier
as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our
ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the
centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges
everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our
power...and our future.