Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

About 70,000 years ago, *Homo sapiens* underwent a Cognitive Revolution. This was not a physical change but a mental one, allowing us to communicate with a new type of language. Unlike other animals, we became able to speak about things that do not exist: myths, gods, and legends. This ability to create imagined realities is our species' unique secret to success. It allowed us to cooperate flexibly and in vast numbers with strangers, something no other animal can do. A chimpanzee cannot convince thousands of others to build a pyramid for a reward in the afterlife.

These shared fictions—from ancient tribal spirits to modern corporations and nations—form the invisible glue that holds our societies together. A company is a legal fiction, money has value only because we all believe it does, and human rights are a story we agree to uphold. Understanding this is crucial. It reveals that the large-scale structures that govern our world are not objective realities, but powerful inter-subjective constructs. Our world is built on a foundation of stories, and by changing the stories, we can change the world itself.