Since the beginning of time, humans have been separated into categories to better classify them.

Whether it is race, gender, economic or political stance, humans automatically find differences to
help better understand one and other. In Coates’ article, he brings up the fact that not only are
humans classified into these different categories, but people of certain categories are seen as
superior, and others are seen as inferior. This did not just start in our time. Since the beginning of
civilization during the agricultural revolution, social tensions and distinctions have been present.
Before the agricultural revolution, during the Paleolithic times, there was no social
tensions present. When people were living as hunter gatherers, there was a very small number of
people in groups, and they all knew each other personally. There was just enough jobs for all
men and women to do their part and equally provide food and work to the group. Men were
designated as hunters to get the meat, and the women were gatherers to get berries and plants to
eat. Both jobs were essential to the survival of the group. Harari and Diamond emphasize the
excellence of the hunter-gatherer societies because they not only allowed for groups of people to
cooperate and each do significant amounts of work to contribute to the group, but they also
allowed for social tensions of any sort to be non-existent at the time. Although this society
seemed perfect, it all changes when the agricultural revolution occured
The Agricultural Revolution had an extremely negative impact on the social equality of
the people. When the Agricultural Revolution began, humans saw it as a perfect change to be
sedentary, and have a large abundance of food to feed their whole group with less deaths. Little
did they know, it would lead to the exact opposite. When humans saw the chance for the
Agricultural Revolution, it allowed humans to form larger groups, which then became
civilizations. Civilizations seemed to have many benefits on the surface such as more people to
help work, and a large food surplus because of the amount of people there were to work, but
looking deeper into the civilizations, it actually caused the entire social norms to completely
shift. Now that there was hundreds, even thousands more people, it allowed for the split between
men and women to begin. Woman still kept their roles as farmers, but they also needed to stay
with the children to take care of them. Men on the other hand now did not have to hunt, and they
did not have the responsibility of the children, so they could find other areas to thrive during the
epidemic of the cereal grains. As Diamond points out, woman now had to keep having more and
more babies that needed to help in the field, which left them with a significantly less amount of
time to do anything involving farming. Now that men were the primary farmers, people in these
civilizations began storing food surplus for themselves, which gained them power. That power
that the men gained and women did not, was the start of social inequalities in civilizations.
The agricultural revolution did not only start the social inequalities between genders, but
the social inequalities between civilizations and groups of people based on power. Imagined
realities, which Harari brings up in chapter two of ​Sapiens, ​is the way that us humans can believe
something is reality that is actually just a collectively believed myth. This may seem
insignificant, but it helped us shape imagined orders which is inter-subjective order that is
present in millions of people’s imaginations. An example Harari points out is human rights.
Human rights do not exist in biology, and they cannot explain what happens in the atomic
creation of the universe. Human rights only exist in our minds, and they would be non-existent
without billions of people believing such an order is true. These imagined orders helped shape a
substantial split in the civilizations and social rankings of people. Based on myths people
believed, it created kings and hierarchies that then completely divided people. Now, based on
food surplus and power, people were able to have superiority over other people based on the
shared imagined order that allowed them to cooperate in such a way. Myths allowed people to
become kings and that became an automatic shift in equality for all humans. This connects to
Coates’ point of inequality being present as long as we can remember. Inequality in a way has
shaped our world, and unless humans stop agreeing on that imagined reality, it will be present
until the end of time.