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By Tetsuya Tsuruhara / Yomiuri Shimbun Senior Writer
11:00 JST, April 3, 2025
When members of the species Homo sapiens lived in Africa in prehistoric times, they were inferior to chimpanzees in terms of individual strength. How did these vulnerable creatures come to dominate the Earth?
Yuval Noah Harari’s effort to solve this mystery with his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” has earned him worldwide fame.
According to Harari’s theory, humankind overwhelmed other animals by engaging in large-scale cooperation. Humankind can cooperate in groups of thousands or tens of thousands, and even with strangers.
The construction of the pyramids, the production of atomic bombs and the exploration of the moon are all works of large and cooperative human groups.
The key to such cooperative work lies in the observation that humans created stories using languages, believed in the stories en masse and took concerted action. Harari has described such widely shared beliefs as “intersubjective reality.”
In ancient times, the shared stories were about gods. Humans controlled groups in the name of orders from on high, became united and took action.
Such stories form an unshakable intersubjective reality for the people who believe them. The stories told and believed in the modern age are about human rights, nations and states. People who share those concepts become united.
The most successful story in history is money. People trust what the sums of it means, and money circulates all over the world.
In his latest book, Harari emphasizes the importance of curating such shared stories. One example concerns the New Testament of the Bible. After the death of Jesus Christ, a wide variety of religious documents proliferated. To avoid confusion, the Council of Carthage was held in the late fourth century to evaluate these texts.
Among them, “The Acts of Paul and Thecla,” which describes a female preacher who caused a miracle and guided her followers, was not adopted as authentic. On the other hand, “The First Epistle to Timothy,” which describes women as those who obey men, was adopted as authentic.
From then on, a tendency to subordinate women to men took root in Christianity.
Today, artificial intelligence has appeared that can make and curate stories on behalf of humans. According to Harari, this marks the greatest crossroads in Earth’s history since the emergence of life 4 billion years ago. Following organic life, nonorganic agents have now emerged. Today’s AI can be likened to such simple living things as amoebas, but more complex and powerful dinosaur-like AI will appear someday.
Will humankind be deprived of its hegemony over the Earth by AI — which is not a living thing? That is what concerns Harari now.
The Yomiuri Shimbun Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari
Harari, 49, is an Israeli historian and philosopher. His book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” in which he gives an outline of human history from a unique perspective, became a worldwide bestseller. His other books include “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow” and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.” He has said he adheres to a strict routine of meditating for two hours every day.
