Because of the agricultural revolution, the way humans organize themselves took an interesting twist. They still had hierarchies but now in a larger scale with the assistance of new technology to produce food and the following rise in population. Harari explains that empires where some of the first organized societies to rise up and use a class system to maintain power. They were similar to today’s corporations with kings or CEO’s at the top and subordinates ranking at different levels below them.
To quote Harari, “even prisons and concentration camps are cooperation networks and can function only because thousands of strangers somehow manage to coordinate their actions” (Harari pg.104). The switch to capitalism was simply creating more branches in the hierarchy process and then have members of the government represent the population instead of the population following the individual in power. Though in order to execute that complex of a system communication technology had to be up to par with the size of the country. One of the reasons the Roman empire fell was it’s technological inability to enforce laws over long distances, eventual causing it to split and brake.
One of the main parts of large societies is to have thinkers, history, and royalty. Though they benefit at the expense of the lower classes daily toil, their contribution to society was ultimately greater in the long run. While the peasants work, the thinkers invent to make work better, the historians recorded valuable information otherwise forgotten, and the royalty pays them to do it. Harari’s Idea of progress pushing humanity agone I find to be very true because of people competitive nature and ability to dream for more.
Harari, Yuval N. author. (2015). Sapiens: a brief history of humankind. New York: Harper.