The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their... — Yuval Noah Harari

The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities. Of course, not all fictions are shared by all humans, but at least one has become universal in our world, and this is money.

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Insight: What makes humans genuinely different from every other animal isn't our intelligence or tool-use—it's that we can agree on things that don't physically exist and make them matter. A dog can't be fooled into thinking a painted piece of paper has value. But you and I can both believe in money, in nations, in corporations, in tomorrow's promise to pay back a loan. We've built entire civilizations on collective fictions that only work because enough of us choose to keep the story going. The strange part is how this actually gives us more power, not less. Money, laws, religions, brands—these invisible agreements let millions of strangers coordinate without ever meeting. They let us plan decades into the future and achieve things no individual could alone. But it also means our reality is fragile in a way other animals' isn't. When people stop believing in the same fiction, the whole system can unravel. A currency collapses. A government falls. A company's reputation vanishes overnight. This explains why we're so obsessed with narrative and storytelling. We're not just exchanging information like other creatures do—we're constantly negotiating which fictions we'll believe in together. Every time you choose to believe in something beyond what you can touch, you're participating in the magic that makes human civilization possible.

Source: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, chapter 3, 2011