Yuval Noah Harari

ובל נח הרר

Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medievalist, military historian, public intellectual, and writer. He currently serves as professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), and Nexus (2024). His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering.

Harari writes about a "cognitive revolution" that supposedly occurred roughly 70,000 years ago when Homo sapiens supplanted the rival Neanderthals and other species of the genus Homo, developed language skills and structured societies, and ascended as apex predators, aided by the agricultural revolution and accelerated by the Scientific Revolution, which have allowed humans to approach near mastery over their environment. His books also examine the possible consequences of a futuristic biotechnological world in which intelligent biological organisms are surpassed by their own creations; he has said, "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so".

Sapiens is based on Harari's lectures to an undergraduate world history class. Outside of popular discourse his work has been met with a generally negative or mixed scholarly reception.

Books by Yuval Noah Harari