The world has changed dramatically in the last 500 years. A modern battleship could shred Columbus’s ships in a matter of seconds. A single computer can store all the data from the medieval world with room to spare. Read more

In the 1700s, governments sent expeditions around the globe to measure the transit of Venus passing between the sun and the Earth, so that they could calculate Earth’s distance from the sun. Read more

Now considering modern economies, Harari notes that banks in the United States can give loans for 10 times the amount of money that’s actually in their vaults. Harari calculates that ninety percent of the money in people’s bank accounts around the world isn’t actually covered by coins and notes. Read more

Modern industrialization creates a wealth of new raw materials for capitalists to invest in, like titanium and plastic, which didn’t exist before the world shifted from farming to industry Read more

Harari thinks about how the world has changed since the Industria; Revolution. He thinks humans cut down forests, built skyscrapers, and changed the ecosystem into a “concrete and plastic” shopping mall. Read more

Most scholars assume that modern humans have achieved so much, so we must be happier than people in hunter-gatherer societies, but Harari’s not convinced. He thinks that peasants had to work harder than foragers, but they got less nutritious food and more disease out of it. Read more

Harari thinks about the future of Homo sapiens. He thinks our species has long tinkered with nature—our ancestors, for example, realized that they could breed fat hens with slow cocks and yield fat, slow offspring that were easier to catch. Read more