Sapiens: Chapters 7–8

Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for running it simply by making copies of their DNA and passing these on to their progeny.

In order to tax hundreds of thousands of people, it was imperative to collect data about people’s incomes and possessions; data about payments made; data about arrears, debts and fines; data about discounts and exemptions.

Between 3000 BC and 2500 BC more and more signs were added to the Sumerian system, gradually transforming it into a full script that we today call cuneiform.

By 2500 BC, kings were using cuneiform to issue decrees, priests were using it to record oracles, and less exalted citizens were using it to write personal letters.

Yet writing’s most important task continued to be the storage of reams of mathematical data, and that task remained the prerogative of partial script.

But tax registries and complex bureaucracies were born together with partial script, and the two remain inexorably linked to this day like Siamese twins—think of the cryptic entries in computerised data bases and spreadsheets.

Clearly, just imprinting a document in clay is not enough to guarantee efficient, accurate and convenient data processing. That requires methods of organisation like catalogues, methods of reproduction like photocopy machines, methods of rapid and accurate retrieval like computer algorithms, and pedantic (but hopefully cheerful) librarians who know how to use these tools.

They obviously had no computers or photocopying machines, but they did have catalogues, and far more importantly, they did create special schools in which professional scribes, clerks, librarians and accountants were rigorously trained in the secrets of data-processing.

The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.

Nature, it was claimed, rewarded merit with wealth while penalising indolence.

Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.

Hammurabi saw it as ordained by the gods.

Their status in society is merely a reflection of their innate nature.

Time and again people have created order in their societies by classifying the population into imagined categories, such as superiors, commoners and slaves; whites and blacks; patricians and plebeians; Brahmins and Shudras; or rich and poor.

Even if somebody is born with a particular talent, that talent will usually remain latent if it is not fostered, honed and exercised.

If, in British-ruled India, an Untouchable, a Brahmin, a Catholic Irishman and a Protestant Englishman had somehow developed exactly the same business acumen, they still would not have had the same chance of becoming rich.

In most cases the hierarchy originated as the result of a set of accidental historical circumstances and was then perpetuated and refined over many generations as different groups developed vested interests in it.

For instance, many scholars surmise that the Hindu caste system took shape when Indo-Aryan people invaded the Indian subcontinent about 3,000 years ago, subjugating the local population.

The invaders, who were few in number, feared losing their privileged status and unique identity. To forestall this danger, they divided the population into castes, each of which was required to pursue a specific occupation or perform a specific role in society.

Concepts of purity and impurity were essential elements in Hindu religion, and they were harnessed to buttress the social pyramid.

Pious Hindus were taught that contact with members of a different caste could pollute not only them personally, but society as a whole, and should therefore be abhorred.

Pious Hindus were taught that contact with members of a different caste could pollute not only them personally, but society as a whole, and should therefore be abhorred.

Africans had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases, whereas Europeans were totally defenceless and died in droves. It was consequently wiser for a plantation owner to invest his money in an African slave than in a European slave or indentured labourer.

But people don’t like to say that they keep slaves of a certain race or origin simply because it’s economically expedient. Like the Aryan conquerors of India, white Europeans in the Americas wanted to be seen not only as economically successful but also as pious, just and objective.

You might think that people would gradually understand that these stigmas were myth rather than fact...

Trapped in this vicious circle, blacks were not hired for white-collar jobs because they were deemed unintelligent, and the proof of their inferiority was the paucity of blacks in white-collar jobs.

These fears were substantiated by scientific studies...

Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis—they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.

Some of the earliest Chinese texts are oracle bones, dating to 1200 BC, used to divine the future. On one was engraved the question: ‘Will Lady Hao’s childbearing be lucky?’ To which was written the reply: ‘If the child is born on a ding day, lucky; if on a geng day, vastly auspicious.’

The text ends with the morose observation: ‘Three weeks and one day later, on jiayin day, the child was born. Not lucky. It was a girl.’

With few exceptions, such an individual could not benefit from a good education, nor engage in business or in philosophical discourse.

Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies.

It has tenaciously weathered political upheavals, social revolutions and economic transformations.

This gives them control of food production, which in turn translates into political clout.

This is why throughout history warfare has been a masculine prerogative.

He didn’t think much of the plebeians under his command. ‘We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers,’ he wrote to a fellow aristocrat during the wars against France.

In order to manage a war, you surely need stamina, but not much physical strength or aggressiveness. Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement.

In order to ensure her own survival and the survival of her children, the woman had little choice but to agree to whatever conditions the man stipulated so that he would stick around and share some of the burden.

But this approach also seems to be belied by the empirical evidence.

But this approach also seems to be belied by the empirical evidence.