443 pages : 24 cm 100,000 years ago, at least six human species 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 Includes bibliographical references and index Timeline of history -- Part 1. The cognitive revolution. An animal of no significance -- The tree of knowledge -- A day in the life of Adam and Eve -- The Flood -- Part 2. The agricultural revolution. History's biggest fraud -- Building pyramids -- Memory overload -- There is no justice in history -- Part 3. The unification of humankind. The arrow of history -- The scent of money -- Imperial visions -- The law of religion -- The secret of success -- Part 4. The scientific revolution. The discovery of ignorance -- The marriage of science and empire -- The capitalist creed -- The wheels of industry -- A permanent revolution -- And they7 lived happily ever after -- The end of homo sapiens -- Afterword: the animal that became a god