What If?

It all begins with a single thought. What if? What if this sound had this meaning? What if this did that? What if there was a higher power? The ability to speak and believe in collective myths is what Harari defines as the Cognitive Revolution. The ability to form abstract thoughts is what led to the inevitable domination of homo-sapiens. This genetic mutation changed the ways of how homo-sapiens think and communicate. It wiped out rival species, and sent many animals to extinction. But it also gave us the ability to fantasize and look past our own self. To fantasize a place, a world, that was beyond us. Say there are multiple gods. Let’s say that there is just, the one God.
Then “shortly” after, we began to think more about the what if’s, and the Agricultural Revolution began. Another great leap forward for homo-sapiens. Life changed. It wasn’t just about hunting and gathering anymore. Most homo-sapiens happily abandoned that life. Now, was a time of farmers. However, Harari points out how this revolution was a long time in the making. In the “hunter/gatherer” time, people had to have a profound relationship with the animals they hunted and the plants that they gathered. But what if? During this revolution, the discoveries and knowledge that our ancestors acquired supplemented the process of farming. But farmers worked. And they worked hard. Harder than hunters. Harder than gatherers. Not to mention the human body wasn’t adjusted to the crops we produced. And thus, history’s biggest fraud was conceived.