About 70,000 years ago, something extraordinary happened inside the minds of Homo sapiens: a Cognitive Revolution. Humans developed the ability to think in entirely new ways — to imagine things that don't exist, to tell stories, and to believe in shared fictions. This wasn't just a curiosity; it was a superpower. While other human species like Neanderthals were stronger and had lived in Europe far longer, Sapiens outcompeted them all.

The secret weapon was language — not just to describe lions at the watering hole, but to gossip, to plan, and above all to create myths. A shared belief in a god, a nation, or a code of law allowed hundreds of strangers to cooperate. No other animal can do this at scale. This capacity for large-scale cooperation based on imagined realities is, Harari argues, the defining trait that made Sapiens the dominant species on the planet.