A review by ladislara
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

If you are like me, fascinated about the history of humankind from the stone age to the smartphone era, this book is for you. 

Yuval Noah Harari not only succeeded in condensing 700,000 years of history in 400 pages, but he managed to do so with such a unique point of view of historical events that it will make you question everything you know. 

The main point of the book, in my opinion, is the idea that humans were only able to create a technologically advanced society because of our collective imagination. He states that entities such as the judicial system, parties, money, nations or companies only exist in our brains, and they can only work because a vast number of people agreed to believe at the same time in the same thing. 

 Even money, something you could argue that has a material existence in the form of bills and coins, is part of our vivid imagination. A $20 bill is only worth $20 because we all agree on it. Otherwise, it’s just a colourful piece of paper (or plastic in some cases). 
 
This is a revolutionary concept, but Harari doesn’t stop there. He presents to the general public new ideas about the rise of empires, the scientific revolution and Capitalism. He demonstrates how these three human constructs are closely intertwined and couldn’t exist without one another. 

European empires were only able to expand throughout the whole world thanks to the curiosity of scientific expeditions and their discoveries. And in turn, new materials and species could only be accessed with the conquest of new worlds. Science itself could just advance with the funding provided by corporations and governments, and its findings are in great deal dictated by the profits they can generate. Capitalism, in turn, was built on top of new scientific discoveries, that allow the industry to explore new materials to create products never before imagined. 
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