“In fact, in the first recorded encounter between Sapiens and Neanderthals, the Neanderthals won.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“That’s why the theory of evolution cannot accept the idea of souls,” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Species that evolved from a common ancestor are bunched together under the heading ‘genus’ (plural genera).” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“When Charles Darwin indicated that Homo sapiens was just another kind of animal, people were outraged.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least six different species of man.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Every two species that evolved from a common ancestor, such as horses and donkeys, were at one time just two populations of… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The third way to change the laws of life is to engineer completely inorganic beings. The most obvious examples are computer programs… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This unique species, known by scientists as Homo floresiensis, reached a maximum height of only one metre and weighed no more than… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The seed algorithm may initially be developed by humans, but as it grows it follows its own path, going where no human… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“It may well be that when Sapiens encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“But humans do such things all the time. Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The human blitzkrieg across America testifies to the incomparable ingenuity and the unsurpassed adaptability of Homo sapiens. No other animal had ever… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“From an evolutionary perspective, the closest thing we have to a human essence is our DNA, and the DNA molecule is the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
Our bodies and minds evolved and were adapted for hundreds of thousands of years for tasks like climbing a tree and picking… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“other words, while the behaviour patterns of archaic humans remained fixed for tens of thousands of years, Sapiens could transform their social… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whether Sapiens are to blame or not, no sooner had they arrived at a new location than the native population became extinct.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“It’s a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a straight line of descent, with Ergaster begetting Erectus, Erectus begetting… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In all probability there is an infinite variety of mental states that no Sapiens, bat or dinosaur ever experienced in 4 billion… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The scientists not only sanctified human feelings, but also found an excellent evolutionary reason to do so. After Darwin, biologists began explaining… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics?… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Timeline of History Years Before the Present 13.5 billion Matter and energy appear. Beginning of physics. Atoms and molecules appear. Beginning of… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Today, the 4-billion-year-old regime of natural selection is facing a completely different challenge. In laboratories throughout the world, scientists are engineering living… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics?… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“We assume that a large brain, the use of tools, superior learning abilities and complex social structures are huge advantages. Only in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Humans first evolved in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago from an earlier genus of apes called Australopithecus, which means ‘Southern Ape’.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In the 150 years since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the life sciences have come to see organisms as… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“No other animal had ever moved into such a huge variety of radically different habitats so quickly, everywhere using virtually the same… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
Until about 30,000 years ago, there were at least five other species of humans on the planet. Homo Sapiens, our ancestors, lived… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain during those 2 million years? Frankly, we don’t know. Another singular… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Tinkering with our genes won’t necessarily kill us. But we might fiddle with Homo sapiens to such an extent that we would… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Without an ability to compose fiction, Neanderthals were unable to cooperate effectively in large numbers, nor could they adapt their social behaviour… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the acestor of all chimpanzees, the other is… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For similar reasons, archaic humans did not initiate any revolutions. As far as we can tell, changes in social patterns, the invention of new… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can conquer oil fields through war, you cannot acquire knowledge that way.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
I think the basic thing that happened is we have lost our story. Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whereas chimpanzees spend five hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour suffices for people eating cooked food. The advent of cooking enabled… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whereas liberalism merged with the milder versions of nationalism to protect the unique experiences of each human community, evolutionary humanists such as Hitler identified… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Small children in affluent societies often dislike showering, and it takes them years of education and parental discipline to adopt this supposedly attractive custom.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Soviet Communism was a fanatical and missionary religion. A devout Communist could not be a Christian or a Buddhist, and was expected to spread… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
