Sapiens

Welcome! Imagine traveling back in time to when multiple human species roamed the Earth. Slowly, one species—us—would come to stand alone, forming tiny forager bands in a harsh landscape. Over tens of thousands of years, we discovered new ways to think, communicate, and organize. This marked a shift from mere survival in the wild to dreaming up entire new worlds.

At the heart of our transformation lies our ability to collaborate in massive groups. We’ve learned to unite under fictional constructs—concepts like nations, gods, and money—that exist only in our shared imagination. While these inventions unleashed our collective power, they also created deep inequalities and moral dilemmas.

In the coming pages, we’ll explore how Homo sapiens climbed to the top of the food chain, why we left hunting and gathering behind, and how large societies formed through myths and shared beliefs. You’ll get a glimpse of the sweeping forces that shaped our world—and hints about where we might go next.

Foragers once enjoyed a surprisingly rich lifestyle, living in small bands and relying on varied foods. They moved with the seasons, gathering fruit and hunting animals, and shared a remarkable depth of knowledge about plants and wildlife. Many arguably worked fewer hours than today’s farmers or office workers. However, their world changed radically once agriculture took hold.

The Agricultural Revolution began as people started cultivating wheat, barley, and other crops. Although it generated more food overall, it didn’t necessarily improve everyday life. Farming demanded longer work hours and encouraged rapid population growth, fueling cramped and disease-prone settlements. From an evolutionary perspective, this was a massive success, exploding the human population. Yet the individual’s daily drudgery often worsened.

Over millennia, the promise of a reliable food source lured humans into permanent villages. As we latched on to domestic grains, those grains quietly ‘domesticated’ us, chaining communities to endless routines of sowing and harvesting. An indirect result would be the growth of hierarchies and the eventual emergence of larger states.