Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sapiens, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Foraging, Industry, and Human Happiness
Fiction, Cooperation, and Culture
Science, Wealth, and Empire
Human-Caused Ecological Devastation
Summary
Analysis
Harari argues that the Romans were used to losing battles. Empires, he notes, persist if they can sustain blows and losses. In 134 B.C.E., a small Iberian Celtic town called Numantia successfully resisted Roman conquest until they were surrounded by Roman troops. The citizens burned their town to the ground and killed themselves to avoid becoming Roman slaves. Numantia later became a symbol for Spanish independence. Yet, Spaniards in subsequent centuries celebrated Numantia in Spanish (a Latin language), rather than Celtic, showing that the Roman empire prevailed, even though the town of Numantia was never conquered.
Having discussed one imagined order (money), Harari now switches to another (the concept of empire). Harari stresses that empires exist even when their actual territories change, to show that empires, like money, aren’t grounded in reality. Rather, they’re powerful fictions invented by humans to facilitate widespread cooperation. Harari stresses how powerful and pervasive the concept of an empire is by showing that even people who think they reject a particular empire actually follow the rules it lays out for cooperation (for example, by adopting an empire’s language).
Themes
Harari characterizes empires in a few distinct ways: empires connect people in diverse cultures under universal rule, they have flexible borders, and they’re potentially unlimited in size. Empires need not emerge from military conquest (the Athenian empire was a voluntary enterprise, while the Hapsburg Empire was formed by a string of aristocratic marriages). Empires can also be tiny. The Aztec empire was smaller than modern-day Mexico, but it consolidated 371 different tribes.
Harari underscores that “empire” is a mental invention, and not a concrete thing, by stressing that empires have few unifying features grounded in actual reality (like being a specific size). Harari cites the Aztec empire to stress that members of an empire are able cooperate on a mass scale because they believe they’re part of the same entity (e.g. the Aztec empire), and they can trust countless strangers to follow the same rules, even if they come from diverse, unknown cultures.
Themes
Many people in the world think that empires don’t work in the long term, and they exploit people. Harari disagrees; he sees empires as the “world’s most common” and “stable” form of political organization. Empires consolidate different cultures into one larger culture. He thinks Jewish people in modern Israel, for example, owe a lot of their cultural practices (like their clothing and food) to the empires they lived under for over 2,000 years. Admittedly, empires use ruthless tactics like wars, slavery, and genocide to establish themselves, but to Harari, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily evil—he thinks they leave behind good things like languages that many people share.
Harari acknowledges that empires—like all imagined orders—can be unfair. For example. they can force people into following rules (for example, through slavery). Despite these problems, Harari still thinks that humanity benefits from empires (like all imagined orders) because they facilitate widespread cooperation (through unified languages and shared cultural practices). Harari thinks powerful imagined orders are ultimately good, because they unite people and help to facilitate global cooperation.
Themes
The Persian empire (established around 500 B.C.E.), for example, sought to unite people in the Mesopotamian region, and its ruler Cyrus the Great often proclaimed that he was establishing a unified empire for his subjects’ benefit. To Harari, this vision presents a stark contrast with ethnic segregation and “us” and “them” thinking. Harari thinks another empire founded on the vision of global unity was the Chinese empire (founded by Qin Shi Huangdi around 250 B.C.E.). Harari thinks such visions depart significantly from the modern “Western” view that a “just world is composed of separate nation states.”
Harari suggests that many modern human beings tend to dislike the concept of an empire because it’s been replaced by a newer imagined order that pictures the world as a fairer (or more “just”) place when it’s divided into “separate nation states.” Harari suggests that this new vision isn’t necessarily better than older imagined orders (like empires), meaning he thinks that humanity doesn’t necessarily improve as people replace old imagined orders with new ones.
Themes
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Harari thinks empires unify people by making it easier for them to share language, goods, and currencies. An empire’s imperial elites usually genuinely think they’re doing something good by enabling others to share in the benefits of their culture. Harari thinks that the modern-day American empire’s elites similarly think they need to spread democracy and human rights, even if they do it with bombs and weapons. Harari thinks that assimilating into an empire can be tough. He imagines an Iberian Celt in the Roman empire who follows all the rules but is still treated like an outsider. Eventually, Harari thinks, the Celt’s desire to fit in will make him demand equality, which will cause the empire to evolve.
One thing Harari likes about empires is that they’re far-reaching imagined orders, or ways of organizing a society to make people cooperate). He thinks that even though some people are oppressed in empires, or find it hard to integrate into pre-existing empires, being in an empire nevertheless makes people share a common language, currency, values, and identity, which makes it more likely that they’ll cooperate with others in the empire. As before, Harari stresses that cooperating with strangers is the core reason why societies flourish.
Themes
Many modern cultures, says Harari, even owe a debt to their “imperial legacies.” British imperialists killed, imprisoned, and subjugated many Indians, but Harari thinks they also laid the groundwork for creating a unified Indian state by uniting warring regions and tribes and creating infrastructure. He imagines many Indians today enjoy cricket, even though the sport is a remnant of British rule. Harari thinks modern day societies share increasingly global threats (like climate change), and he wonders if a new empire will emerge that can make people cooperate on global issues. He also worries about scientific developments like artificial intelligence, and he wonders how they’ll change the face of the world in the future.
Harari acknowledges that empires can be brutally oppressive when they spread into new territories. Harari makes the controversial claim that empires are a good thing, because they’re imagined orders (values and rules for a society) that unite disparate regions and make people cooperate on a vast scale, which makes societies flourish—even if many of those people are forced to cooperate or get pushed to the bottom of the empire’s hierarchy. Harari also clues the reader in to the fact that he’s very skeptical about scientific developments in modern society. He’ll explore this issue at length from Chapter 14 onwards.
Themes
