Harari thinks that humanity’s ancestors, Homo sapiens, evolved a unique ability to imagine and believe things that aren’t true around 70,000 years ago, a time known as the Cognitive Revolution. He argues that this ability to collectively believe in (and rally around) the same ideas, stories, rules, and goals enabled Sapiens to cooperate on a much wider scale than any other species on Earth. Harari thinks the Cognitive Revolution marks Homo sapiens’ rise to the top of the food chain and the beginning of humanity’s global domination.
Cognitive Revolution Quotes in Sapiens
The Sapiens quotes below are all either spoken by Cognitive Revolution or refer to Cognitive Revolution. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2
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Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.
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In what way can we say that Peugeot SA (the company’s official name) exists? There are many Peugeot vehicles, but these are obviously not the company. Even if every Peugeot in the world were simultaneously junked and sold for scrap metal, Peugeot SA would not disappear. It would continue to manufacture new cars and issue its annual report. […] Peugeot has managers and shareholders, but neither do they constitute the company. All the managers could be dismissed and all its shares sold, but the company itself would remain intact […] In short, Peugeot SA seems to have no essential connection to the physical world. Does it really exist? Peugeot is a figment of our collective imagination.
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Cognitive Revolution Term Timeline in Sapiens
The timeline below shows where the term Cognitive Revolution appears in Sapiens. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: An Animal of No Significance
...humans began forming more complex structures: cultures. Three important cultural “revolutions” happened since then: the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago), the Agricultural Revolution (12,000 years ago), and the Scientific Revolution (500 years...
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Chapter 2: The Tree of Knowledge
...Sapiens’ brains to function differently, causing a massive cognitive leap forward. Harari calls this the Cognitive Revolution .
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...two distinct communities. Harari thinks ancient Homo sapiens functioned in the same way until the Cognitive Revolution enabled them to cooperate in much larger groups.
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...they’re working at a “real” company. Sapiens, thus, have occupied a dual reality since the Cognitive Revolution . Harari thinks our imagined reality even controls our physical one, since “the very survival...
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Archaic humans’ behavioral patterns remained fixed for thousands of years, but since the Cognitive Revolution , Homo sapiens can “transform social structures” in mere decades. Harari thinks this gave Sapiens...
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Chapter 3: A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve
...the nuclear family are intrinsic to our nature. Harari will explore Sapiens’ history between the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago) and the Agricultural Revolution (12,000 years ago) to offer his own insights.
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...that—like modern hunter-gatherer societies—ancient Sapiens’ lifestyles were very ethnically and culturally diverse, partly because the Cognitive Revolution (and the ability to imagine fictional realities) enabled a wide diversity of norms and lifestyles,...
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Chapter 4: The Flood
Before the Cognitive Revolution , all species of humans lived in the Afro-Asian landmass. Other land masses, like Australia...
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Chapter 9: The Arrow of History
Animals in nature don’t typically try to unite their entire species. Harari thinks the Cognitive Revolution enabled Homo sapiens to do so. He thinks three global ideas (or imagined orders) began...
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