Today's the day you've been waiting for. It's "Sapiens." It's a very famous book. "Ah, famous books are a bit..." Even if you have hipster tendencies due to your antipathy to fame, you can consider this a very great book that can make you forget its fame.

But it has 650 pages. When it comes to interior, even if you say it's worth only around 2 books, when you try to read it, it'll feel like your brain is splitting.

Because the content is so vast, there are many cases where people miss the main content.

Therefore, today I'm going to start it off nicely for those of you who can't turn the pages even though you've bought it.

I've read it, but I'd like to rehash it! I couldn't understand it. If you want to have a bite, we will compress "Sapiens" more thoroughly and carefully than other contents out there, so just trust me and follow me.

Come on! How did a human become the best? Humans have been so strong and so cruel since a long time ago.

Whenever humans take a step, animal carcasses came out in a bunch. A big rat that has been eating and living well for tens of millions of years, a very big elephant, a huge cat, and even a huge monkey, most of them disappeared in less than 2,000 years as soon as they met humans.

They have been extinct throughout the vast history. "Aack, it's a human!" "Let me live!" Human beings were nothing less than a walking catastrophe.

As soon as humans arrived in Australia, 23 out of 24 species of huge animals went extinct. Fiji, New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, America.

No matter the nation, if humans make their way there, the ecosystem would change beyond recognition. "This is what humans are!" As for this cruelty, even though they look exactly like us, it was done by Neanderthals, who were twice as strong and had a much larger brain size than us.

Now, wouldn't there be something you're curious about at this point?

How did humans become the best? Humans' place in the food chain was, until very recently, in the middle. Even if you, who are currently watching this video, were to fight with a chimpanzee, most of you will be knocked out in a minute.

Then, how did such a weak creature take over the planet Earth and was able to torture other animals?

"Maybe because we're the only animal that can use equipment?" No. Like I mentioned in another video, orangutans fish for termites with branches, and even use it to take things out of the water.

Bald eagles use rocks to break ostrich eggs and eat them, and seagulls eat clams on rocks.

Beavers even cut down trees and build dams. To say that we're the only animal that uses equipment, there are too many instances that say the contrary.

Then, what is the most appropriate answer? The first one is fire.

Ever since humans found out about fire, they were able to eat rice or potatoes that were hard to eat raw, since they can also avoid bacterial and parasitic infections with it.

And the most important key point is that fire is very much strong.

A child with a torch is capable of burning down a forest and wiping out hundreds of people just within a few hours.

The power of fire was simply devastating. "Do you have any complaints, then?" Of course, I have none. 150,000 years ago, despite the benefits of fire, humankind was still struggling on the edge of Africa.

The real factor that made humans strong was actually language.

Of course, other primates, like elephants and whales, also talk in their own language. For example, in the case of green monkeys, "Be careful, there's an eagle!

" "A lion's coming! Run!" They may talk to each other like this.

However, the language of humans is a bit different. Connecting limited sounds to symbols can really create infinite kinds of sentences. If a monkey goes, "Careful, there's a human!" We can say it like this: "I saw a monkey this morning at 11:30 AM in Sinchon." Continuing on, "At the station?

" "Not the station, but around Outback." They can describe the exact location and the way to get there.

"Shall we report it to the police?" With this information, they can work with each other and share opinions on what to do with the monkey.

"I'll upload it on my Instagram." Language has helped humans share a lot of information, build friendships, and strengthen cooperative relationships.

Now, okay! Fire and language. It's exactly what we saw in the textbook. Hmm, but, you see.

It still kind of feels stuffy, right? Yes, that's it. Even though fire and language are indeed the key points to the development of humankind, it's not a enough answer to the question on how humans became the one to rule the world.

In fact, isn't it scientifically proven that the only time we deal with fire is while eating or smoking, and that the natural scale that can speak with language is only about 150 people?

The nature of the question about how humans became the strongest in the world is not these stuffs.

What we're really curious about is how do humans use smartphones, how do they drive cars, how did they get to develop vaccines, and how were they able to launch rockets?

"Sapiens" is a book that gives a clear answer to that question. The real reason about how humans took over the earth, there's no need to explain it long.

The decisive reason about it explained by Sapiens is none other than the two levels of "Level Up".

The 1st level is the agricultural revolution. The 2nd level is the science revolution. Humans were able to become the strongest on earth after these two stages of awakening.

Then, shall we look into them one by one? Until before humans started farming, there was little to no food leftovers.

They would've been looking for a day's worth of food, and were scrambling to eat it before it goes bad.

But how about farming? Because of its nature, it leaves a lot of rice for months to years. Thus, those leftover rice became the key factor in the development of civilization.

The population increased as much as the amount of rice left. The more people born, the more advanced technology becomes, and the more advanced technology is, more rice will be left.

"I think I can handle farming by myself." By then, they could even feed people who don't farm. This spare time has created so-called professional jobs, like miners digging for ore, and soldiers guarding the town.

And among them were politicians like civil servants and kings.

It is the birth of a nation. If you dedicate the leftover rice in your home to the nation, the nation would keep us safe with its law and army.

In this process, the nation created texts to record how much rice was dedicated. Texts have become a save-load device for human knowledge.

It's the butterfly effect from leftover rice. Okay, understood for now! However, we still have a long way to go, right?

I understand that farming was a revolution, but if they're just plowing the field like this, when will they arrive on the moon and make a smartphone?

Yes, I understand. The agricultural revolution is just the beginning. The decisive cause that pushed humans to be the strongest is the 2nd awakening!

[Science Revolution / The second level] In other words, the science revolution. Before we had a science revolution, humans thought that they've known everything.

What happens if they don't know something? Then, they'd just go ask Jesus, Buddha, or Confucius.

"I got slapped on my cheek, what should I do?" "Get slapped on the other side as well." Of course, the mighty people didn't know every information out there, but they didn't need to worry much about it.

Because things that Jesus or Buddha don't know about are useless knowledge that you don't need to know about as well.

[Icarus / Tower of Babel] No, it was knowledge that you shouldn't know. But how is it right now?

Even though physicists have studied constantly all their lives, they meekly admit that they don't know what caused the Big Bang, or how to intermix relativity with quantum mechanics.

And thus they say, "That's why we want to know..!" The world has changed dramatically since we realized that we knew absolutely nothing.

More than half of the tightly packed world map was drawn empty. The people who saw the empty map felt a bloodthirsty sense of adventure and conquest. "Ah, I want to find out!

" Now, the people who insisted that they're right have become cool enough to acknowledge things when there's evidence.

Because, you didn't know, and I didn't know as well.

This is a scientific revolution called the Revolution of Ignorance. The idea that humans don't know things yet aroused the desire to explore and conquer all the unknown in the world.

Even at this moment, many unknown lands are being conquered by scientists. And among them, the sector that stands out the most is medicine.

Up until the 19th century, even if you get only minor injuries, the doctors would saw off your hands and legs.

There were more sons of carpenters in military hospitals than people with a doctor's license, because they didn't really need anything for surgery other than sawing techniques.

One in three children died before they even graduated from elementary school. The human life expectancy was less than 40 years old.

Then, how about now? Humankind has overcome many diseases and wounds, and human life expectancy has even nearly doubled. We're now doing something we've never imagined before, and scientists are trying to do something even more amazing.

Science has already succeeded in increasing the lifespan of insects by six times and creating genius mice that are capable of learning.

Biotech arms like Automail from Fullmetal Alchemist, retinal implant for visual impairment, and bionic ears for the deaf, new inventions like these that can replace the human body are coming out in a row.

There's still a lot of room for improvement, but really, in the near future, it's going to be much stronger and more detailed than the human body. "Hold on, then I just need to swap my body with new parts before I grow old and die." In the end, we'd end up thinking like this.

Some scholars are really serious about saying that in 2050, some humans won't die.

Of course, not all scholars agree on this kind of future, but looking back on the decades we've been through, we can't completely ignore that possibility.

What if we use genetic modification to increase regeneration? What if we use nanorobots to remove cancer cells? What if we upload our brains to the computer?

Human beings have already been investing tens, hundreds, and thousands of trillion won in these fantasies every year, and that possibility continues to grow.

However. "Everyone," Yuval Harari splashed some cold water out of the blue. "Does this really look like a level up to you?" Let's go back and look at the agricultural revolution again.

We often accept farming as a level-up for mankind.

It's all thanks to farming that primitive men who trembled from the cold and the wild beasts were protected by civilization and enjoyed a safe life.

Yes, that is correct. It is a fact that the agricultural revolution provided humanity with safety. However, that doesn't mean that it's "definitely better".

So what was life like for hunter-gatherers on the Korean Peninsula tens of thousands of years ago? For example, I think it was like this.

They woke up at 8 AM in the morning and left the camp. They plucked out mushrooms in the forest near them, dug up vegetables, caught frogs, and at 1 PM, they returned to the camp and prepared lunch.

For the rest of their time, they chat with their friends, and idle away their time around a bonfire.

They danced and had a good sleep. But after the agricultural revolution, the farmer spent all day in the blazing sun and disease-infested soil, eating weeds, plowing fields, catching bugs, collecting poop, and fetching water.

The livestock they started to raise spread countless infectious diseases, and the leftover rice (private property) brought endless greed and discrimination.

[Agriculture is the biggest scam in human history] I'm sure you have seen this picture before at least once. It's the dining table of our ancestors who only ate rice with no side dishes.

Most of them took it as a joke, saying that it was the power of Koreans for rice, but this picture actually contains much more detailed information.

Until very recently, people in agrarian societies ate very limited foods (rice) and had unbalanced diets.

The humans who ate fruits, fish, meat, and various nutrients every day, suffered from vitamin deficiency, malnutrition, shortness, and weakness ever since they started farming.

There were also a lot more who starved to death. So, that's it.

This is the biggest problem of the Agricultural Revolution. The dependence on single food (rice) was too high. Before farming, if the grass they usually eat is gone, they could have eaten something else or move out to a new place.

But after farming, if there's a drought, fire, earthquake, or everything else, you're going to have to starve to death. "That's just what happened to them, is it still a good thing for humanity?

" Of course, had the agricultural revolution didn't happen, we wouldn't have air conditioners today, we wouldn't be able to order delivery, and we might have not been able to live comfortably.

However, the child who starved to death 2,000 years ago, "I died of malnutrition, but in 2,000 years, people will eat delicious meals and live in large air-conditioned houses, so I'm not bothered." he wouldn't have said this.

And in this context, the same goes for science. It is science who heals people who are sick, but it is also science who sent the atomic bomb to Nagasaki.

Science's unique curiosity and desire to conquer led to the discovery of America beyond the unknown sea, but everything that followed was also done by the curiosity and the desire to conquer science.

A lot of modern people live on the scaffold of science, but underneath that scaffold, there's a much larger number of bodies rotting with painful expressions. "Then, why did we level up?

" By the time small changes pile up and pile up and change society as a whole, we forget how we used to live.

We can't even imagine a life without refrigerators, air conditioners, and smartphones. Sometimes, when we have to take a bus without a battery, we'd feel a hellish kind of fear. "Ah, should I take this one?

Was your life painful and hellish when you had no smartphone? We believe that we are living a better and better world as the days go by, but as history unfolds, there is no evidence that human welfare is unconditionally better.

Have we really become happier? Are you sure that the old men and women who lived in Asia's poorest countries were more depressed and unhappy than we are now?

Has the world been made a better and happier place to live? While the scientific revolution gave us superhuman strength and near-infinite energy?

If that is not the case, can we really call it a level up? We think that everything has turned better and that the world has improved, but history is surprisingly uninterested in your happiness.

Yuval Harari emphasizes this. Humans are so ignorant and weak that they usually don't influence history to develop in their favor.

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