At an individual level, humans might be memory-makers, but as a species-level they are myth-makers. Without myths, there is no glue to bind Sapiens together. The importance of shared myths is that they allow Sapiens to cooperate, organise at scale, and dominate the world. And that difference is that Sapiens are myth-makers they use imagination and language to create and communicate new worlds, alternatives and possibilities. The big idea in Sapiens is the thing that sets Sapiens apart from other species. And you are also Trans, but you’ll have to read through to insight #10 to find out why. So forget mixed race, intersex or other non-binary identities, you are Interspecies. You are not pure Homo Sapiens, but probably the result of interspecies breeding between Sapiens and Neanderthal (up to 4% of your genes are probably Neanderthal). However, if you are European or Middle Eastern, then your status as Homo Sapiens is more complicated.
Today, Sapiens is the only remaining species of human. It is likely that your Sapiens ancestors killed off the Neanderthal species of humans about 40,000 years ago, and did so because “they were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate” (they also had bigger brains than your ancestors – but perhaps your ancestors had bigger sticks). You are Homo Sapiens (“Wise Humans” as we immodestly label ourselves) and just one of a number of different species of human that have roamed the planet together. You are human but you are not the only species of human.
It’s impossible to do justice to the 443 pages of rich insight that make up the bestselling Sapiens in just a few lines, but here are our ten top takeouts relevant to anyone researching or innovating for humans. What does it mean to be human? In a sweeping narrative spanning two and half million years of human evolution, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari weaves insights from science and the humanities together to answer to what it means to be human.
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