War spreads ideas, technologies and people far more quickly than commerce.
Валерия Григорьеваhas quoted2 years ago
clutches of carefree children playing in the mud
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
Evolution thus favoured those capable of forming strong social ties.
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart? Perhaps this is exactly why our ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals. They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
But fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give Sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers.
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
zeinabmammedovahas quoted2 years ago
all revolved around telling stories, and convincing people to believe them.
bakumovayvhas quoted2 years ago
Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan bereft of family, lacking siblings or cousins, and most importantly, without parents.