The cognitive revolution introduced new ways of thinking and communicating. An accidental mutation altered the inner wiring of the brain enabling these new ways to interact among one another (Harari p.21). This gave homo sapiens the ability to imagine new worlds and ideas and eventually form imagined orders which have been relevant since. By introducing the concept of growing food, the agricultural revolution sparked a new way of life for homo sapiens. This encouraged people to to create stationary societies opposed to the nomadic way of life.
Homo sapiens became so dominant as a result of our abnormally sized brains. Our brains gave us the skills and reason to develop as the premier species in todays world. Homo sapiens have overtime created an inter-subjective (Harari p.116) order that exists in the shared imagination within us. This would be called imagined orders. I think that imagined orders have created a social structure within societies around the world. These structures include but are not limited to religion, government, and money. The concept of money is quite fascinating if you think about it. You take something without any inherent value such as paper and you create a story behind it to make it a desired aspect of life. By having these imagined orders in our society it gave us more inspiration in life opposed to simply surviving. Also a part of homo sapiens thriving as a species has to do with the domestication of fire. Fire gave us the ability to cook, stay warm, and protect ourselves against predators which ultimately led to survival. Harari’s arguments were valid because they were backed by reason and scientific facts. Homo sapiens became dominant because our their ability to interact with each other and therefore exchange ideas on all aspects of life.
I really liked how you brought up that the humans increased mental capacity was from a genetic mutation that improved communication as well as discussing how the size of our brain was advantageous for us. The imagined orders in our lives are such an interesting concept and I hadn’t thought about how our to imagine realities are actually motivational and a large portion of the reason we live, at least in modern times. I might disagree about the same being true for peasants of a monarchy in 1504 but it is a good analogy for now.
I agree with you that the cognitive revolution led to our ability to create common mythologies which in turn led to shared beliefs which allowed us to build civilizations. Your example of money is an excellent one as it’s a major driving factor for a large percentage of those in ‘civilized’ societies. The flipside to created mythologies is in many instances, they can actually create a division within and across civilizations which actually acts to undermine the stability they were designed to reinforce. Take your example, money, for instance. Wealth, or the lack thereof, has created some of the greatest dividing lines which reach across the boundaries of our worlds societies. Indeed, the lack an invented construct is the very thing that most threatens very large populations living in poverty across the world.