Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harariby Parker on TwosThe most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were insignificant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfishHomo sapiens – the species sapiens (wise) of the genus Homo (man)This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was, until quite recently, solidly in the middlehumankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerousThe advent of cooking enabled humans to eat more kinds of food, to devote less time to eating, and to make do with smaller teeth and shorter intestines. Some scholars believe there is a direct link between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human intestinal track, and the growth of the human brain. Since long intestines and large brains are both massive energy consumers, it’s hard to have both. By shortening the intestines and decreasing their energy consumption, cooking inadvertently opened the way to the jumbo brains of Neanderthals and SapiensHomo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique languageOur language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal. Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheatLarge numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common mythsThere are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beingsEver since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens has thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as gods, nations and corporations