Yuval Noah Harari

[T]he burgeoning new society of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white Europeans and a subjected class of black Africans.

Myths and fictions accustom... people... to think in certain ways, to believe in... certain standards, to want certain things, and to observe certain rules. ...[T]hereby ...artificial instincts ...enable millions of strangers to cooperate ...This network of artificial instinct is ...'Culture'.

The extinction of the Australian Megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet.

In many societies women were simply the property... Rape, in many legal systems, falls under property violation... [i.e.,] the victim is not the woman... but the male who owns her. The Bible decrees... 'If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes... and lies with her, and they are found... the man... shall give... the father... fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife'... Deuteronomy 22:28-9... Raping a woman who did not belong to any man was not considered a crime...

The agricultural revolution is one of the most controversial events in history. Some... proclaim... it set humankind on the road to prosperity and progress. Others... that it has led to perdition.

The elephant bird and the giant lemurs, along with most of the other large animals of Madagascar, suddenly vanished about 1.500 years ago - precisely when the first humans set foot on the island.

The ancient Chinese believed that the goddess Nü wa created humans from earth, she kneaded aristocrats from fine yellow soil, whereas commoners were formed from brown mud.

American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti and Brazil were plunged by malaria and , which had originated in Africa. Africans had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases.

The moment the hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that the Homo sapiens to the top rung in the food chain, and became the deadliest species ever in the 4-billion-year history of life on earth.

According to... evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth.

[T]he new agricultural tasks demanded so much time... people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat field. ...[W]heat... domesticated us.

This () was a collection of laws and judicial decisions whose aim was to present Hammurabi as a role model of a just king, serve as a basis for a more uniform legal system across the Babylonian Empire, and teach future generations what justice is and how a just king acts.