The power of myths

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I do not know how many of the followers of the column “Surfactants alert” had the chance (or rather the fortune) to read the splendid book of Nuval Noha Harari “Sapiens, a Brief History of Humankind” (1). For those who did not, let me make a brief digression. In the chapter 2, “The Tree of Knowledge” Harari argues that a key step that made Homo Sapiens dominating over other Homo and animal species and eventually the world, is what he calls “the cognitive revolution” i.e. the ability to deal with information about things that do not really exist (the “fictions”). Sapiens was not only able to imagine fictions, but to do so collectively. From the “lion man (or woman)” found in the Stadel cave in Germany and dated to 32 000 years ago, Sapiens has continuously created myths like the biblical creation story or the Dreamtime myths of aboriginal Australians, and laid the basis of religions, of the building of empires, of nationalist believes.