I am not going to lie to you, guys, this book is long and it took me about five weeks to read! However, the history of humankind is fascinating, to say the least, and every single person on the planet should read Sapiens at least one time in their lifetime.  It is not written in complicated language (it’s just a lot of information to absorb!) and I guarantee it will get the neurons in your brain bouncing off one another, causing you to take pause in every notion you have previously had about humans, our place on Earth and how we have got to where we are today.

Harari walks us through the evolution of humanity. He starts with the Cognitive Revolution, which took place more than 70,000 years ago, flows into the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, then explains how politics slowly unified humankind to form one global empire, and finally gets to the Scientific Revolution, which commenced in the 1500s.

Harari challenges our perceived ideas about objective facts, demonstrating that these so-called “facts” have been designed and invented by humans, therefore actually making them fiction. His argument is based off the immense capability Homo Sapiens have for imagination, which in turn gives rise to our ability to unite in large numbers and believe in the doctrines of religion, nationality, money and human rights. The problem with this is it also allows for humans to discriminate against people who do not follow the same line of imagination.

The one common denominator in our imagination is, of course, money. All 7.8 billion people on Earth believe in the objective power of money and there is no disputing its value to us, despite the fact that it is indeed fiction! Perhaps this is one reason why there has been little to no research into the history of human happiness. Indeed, Harari insists we are no happier today than we were in past eras, despite how much humans, our inventions and all our “conveniences” have evolved.

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