The Rise and Limitations of Ancient Democracies

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In early human societies, the ability to walk away was a form of resistance against dictatorship.
The switch to agriculture gave rise to kings, hierarchies, and authoritarian regimes.
Large-scale democracies were historically impossible as societies grew larger.
Ancient Athens and Rome had limited democracies with a small percentage of the population having political rights.
Large-scale democracies only emerged in the late 18th and 19th centuries with the United States and Western Europe.

Yuval Noah Harari is one of the rare historians who can give us a two-million-year perspective on today’s headlines. In this wide-ranging conversation, Yuval explains how technology and democracy have evolved together over the course of human history, from paleolithic tribes to city states to kingdoms to nation states. So where do we go from here? “In almost all the conversations I have,” Yuval says, “we get stuck in dystopia and we never explore the no less problematic questions of what happens when we avoid dystopia.” We push beyond dystopia and consider the nearly unimaginable alternatives in this special episode of Your Undivided Attention.