Yuval Noah Harari - Unstoppable Us, Volume 1

Growing up is hard work. Not just for you and your friends, but for everybody, including animals. For lion cubs to grow up, they need to learn how to run and hunt zebras. A young dolphin must learn how to swim and catch fish. An eagle chick needs to learn how to fly and build a nest. And none of thats easy.

But growing up is even harder for humans because were not sure what we need to learn. Lions run and hunt zebras, dolphins swim and catch fish, eagles fly and build nestswhat do humans do?

When you grow up, you might drive a race car faster than any lion can run. You might sail a ship farther than any dolphin can swim. You might pilot an airplane higher than any eagle can fly. You might do a million other things that animals can hardly even imagine. Like invent a computer game, discover a new kind of medicine, lead an expedition to Mars, or sit at home all day and watch TV. Humans have so many options! Thats why being a human is really confusing.

But no matter what you end up doing, its good to know why humans have so many options in the first place. Its because we rule planet Earth.

Planet Earth was once ruled by many different animals. Lions, bears, and elephants ruled the land. Dolphins, whales, and sharks ruled the sea. Eagles, owls, and vultures ruled the sky. But now we humans rule everything: the land, the sea, and the sky. Wherever we go in our cars, ships, and airplanes, the lions, dolphins, and eagles need to move asideand fast! Animals cant stop us from building highways through their forests. They cant stop us from building dams across their rivers. And they cant stop us from polluting the oceans and skies.

In fact, we humans are now so powerful that the fate of all other animals depends on us. The only reason lions, dolphins, and eagles still exist is because we allow them to. If humans wanted to get rid of all the lions, dolphins, and eagles in the world, we could make it happen by next year.

Thats a lot of power, and it can be used in good ways or bad ways. To be a good human being, you need to understand the power you have and what to do with it.

And for that, you need to know how we got our power in the first place.

We humans arent strong like lions, we dont swim as well as dolphins, and we definitely dont have wings! So how did we end up ruling the planet? The answer to that is one of the strangest tales youll ever hear.

AND its a true story.

Our story starts millions of years ago. Back then, humans were just ordinary animals. People didnt live in houses, didnt go to work or to school, and didnt have cars, computers, or supermarkets. They lived in the wild, they climbed trees to pick fruit, they sniffed around looking for mushrooms, and they ate worms, snails, and frogs.

The other animalsgiraffes, zebras, and baboons, for instancewerent afraid of humans and didnt pay them much attention. Nobody imagined that one day humans would fly to the moon, make atom bombs, and write books, like the one youre reading now.

At first, humans didnt even know how to make tools. Sometimes they used stones to crack nuts. But they didnt have bows and arrows, spears, or knives. Humans were relatively weak animals, and whenever a lion or a bear appeared, humans had to run awayand fast!

Nowadays, a lot of kids still wake up in the middle of the night, frightened that theres a monster under the bed. This is a memory from millions of years ago. In the past, there really were monsters that sneaked up on children in the night. If you heard a noise in the dark, it could have been a lion coming to eat you. If you quickly climbed to the top of a tree, you survived. But if you went back to sleep, the lion ate you.

Sometimes, when lions killed a giraffe and ate it, people would watch from a safe distance. They wanted some meat for themselves, but they were too afraid to come close. Even after the lions left, the humans still didnt dare approach. Because the hyenas had moved in to eat the leftoversand humans were afraid to pick a fight with that quarrelsome bunch. Finally, when all the other animals had gone, the humans tiptoed carefully to the carcass to look for scrapsbut the only thing left was bare bones. So they shrugged and went off in search of figs.