For millions of years, humans were an insignificant animal – merely hunters who lived in fear of being hunted.

Eventually, Homo sapiens rose to the top of the food chain by using their minds in unprecedented ways, possibly as a result of a mutation in their brains.

This mental shift – the Cognitive Revolution – took place around 70,000 years ago. Its most significant effect was the invention of complex language, which aided communication geared toward cooperation and survival.

Stories build cooperation. As language evolved, communities expanded. Nations, churches or legal systems could not exist without the ability to speak about tangible things like lions and trees. That’s why humans live in a dual reality: the physical and the imaginary.

Humans appear to have the same physical, emotional, and intellectual capabilities today as they did 30,000 years ago. The majority of our psychology was developed about 10,000 years ago, but there's no reason to believe that humans of the modern era have become more intelligent.

Collectively, humans know more today than the planet’s entire population 15,000 years ago. Individually, humans are far more specialized now, even as we move toward one world culture. Yet ancient foragers still represent the most skillful, knowledgeable people in history.

Humans’ second major revolution unfolded in the Middle East, 12,000 years ago, with the domestication of plants and animals. Hunter-gatherers settled down and became farmers. Once they started living in villages and towns surrounded by ‘the wild’, it became hard to leave.

This Agricultural Revolution didn’t improve humans’ quality of life initially. People could gather more food, but there were more mouths to feed. Ever since then, there hasn't been one predominant way of life. A variety of cultures began to increase exponentially.

People lived in tighter spaces, but their sense of time expanded. Farmers were forced to think about status and the future like never before. Since social orders are imagined, they can’t be passed on through DNA. Instead, they were preserved and transmitted through information.

The Mesopotamians achieved this with the invention of writing. For the first time, humans could transfer knowledge onto objects accessible to others. This made possible the complex forms of administration needed to create cities and empires. History was about to take off...