Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

You know without looking that a book subtitled A Brief History of Humankind is an ambitious undertaking. And when you see the book is only 416 pages long, you suspect the author must paint with a rather broad brush. But that approach can work if you step back far enough and enjoy the view from a great distance. So is such a book worth reading? In the case of Sapiens, I think the answer is an enthusiastic Yes!

The author has a PhD in history for the University of Oxford and now lectures on world history. His organizing principle for this book is that three revolutions greatly affected human history. They were: (1) the cognitive revolution—begun about 70,000 years ago; (2) the agricultural revolution—begun about 12,000 years ago; and show more (3) the scientific revolution, begun about 500 years ago.

The cognitive revolution probably began when humans began to walk upright instead of shambling along on four limbs like modern day apes. Standing upright allowed sapiens to scan their surroundings for game or enemies. More importantly, it freed their arms for throwing things or signaling and it allowed their hands to develop significant dexterity.

Mastering the use of fire had some unexpected consequences. It was not only a source of heat and light, it was a formidable weapon against larger animals. Harari argues that for most of their existence, men were in the middle of the food chain and only comparatively recently, with the development of weapons, have been able to hunt large game. The ecosystem has not had time to adjust to man’s current food chain primacy. Moreover:

“[h]aving so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.”

Most cultural historians point to the invention of agriculture as an event that freed man from some of the vicissitudes of primitive existence and fueled further development of the human brain. Harari disagrees. He argues that the life of a farmer required much more work than that of a hunter-gatherer. Moreover, most early farmers were virtually trapped on their lands in order to protect their crops from marauding scavengers like crows and other humans. The Agricultural Revolution, Harari avers, “left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers.” Extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure, he notes: “Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites.” In other words, he claims, “plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.”

As for his second point, what did primarily fuel brain development according to Harari? He contends the aspect of human development that allowed us to take primacy over all other species was the evolution of a sophisticated language, a unique feature of which is the ability to transmit information about things that do not exist. This in turn allowed us to create myths, which made collective cooperation possible.

Harari makes numerous fascinating observations about these organizing myths of Sapien society. One of his most interesting chapters is about religion. He points out that when animism (the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence) was replaced by polytheism (a belief that the world is controlled by a group of powerful gods), the greatest impact was on mankind’s conception of mankind. He observes:

“Animists thought that humans were just one of many creatures inhabiting the world. Polytheists, on the other hand, increasingly saw the world as a reflection of the relationship between gods and humans. Our prayers, our sacrifices, our sins and our good deeds determined the fate of the entire ecosystem. [emphasis added]”

Then polytheism was replaced by monotheism which Harari doesn’t see as a positive step. He explains that polytheism does recognize a supreme power governing the universe, standing behind all the different gods who take care of day-to-day matters. (In modern parlance, we might understand this as the gods who figure out which football team to favor in a match, which makes more sense than both sides counting on Jesus.)

Since it is the multitude of lesser gods that are concerned with the mundane cares of humans, the supreme power is devoid of interests and biases. Thus, Harari argues, “polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance.” On the other hand:

“Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth.”

It is necessary, therefore, for monotheists to “strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.”

Unfortunately, monotheists have a bit of problem explaining away evil. Somewhat wryly, Harari contends:

“There is one logical way of solving the riddle [of evil]: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe - and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.”

Religious beliefs have limits in other ways too. The Scientific Revolution, which began about 500 years ago, caused tremendous changes in the way people live and think. Harari maintains that a key to the revolution was the discovery of our ignorance. When man realized that not all knowledge was contained in sacred texts, he began to look elsewhere for enlightenment. Then he discovered that he could learn about the world by systematically examining it. This in turn led man not only to challenge prior beliefs, but to develop new tools to exploit the new knowledge.

One group of Sapiens, the Europeans, caught on to the implications of the scientific revolution faster than any other group on the planet. Modern science and the institution of capitalism allowed them to dominate the late modern world.

Harari concludes with some dour observations about the fate of our species. He says, “As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning.” He warns that we can’t be certain that modern science won’t create a replacement for Homo sapiens by fashioning beings who possess completely different cognitive and emotional worlds. He cautions:

“What we should take seriously is the idea that the next stage of history will include not only technological and organizational transformations, but also fundamental transformations in human consciousness and identity.”

Lastly, Harari wants to make sure we know that we are a danger to ourselves and other species. Harari believes the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before. He compares our powers to those of ancient gods but grouses that we are directionless. His final sentence is:

“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”

Evaluation: This book is chock full of incisive and trenchant observations and occasional humor, but its concluding mood is pessimistic. His next book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow,, attempts to show the way out of the fix in which he leaves us in Sapiens.

Note: The hardback book contains photos, maps, and a timeline. You have to love a timeline that begins 13.5 billion years ago.

(JAB) show less

When I started this book I was sure of one thing, "This book was going to disappoint me". I could not conceive the idea of how a writer would do justice to both the macroscopic as well as microscopic aspects of homo sapiens. I was sure he would lean either towards the macroscopic aspect and forget important trajectories of the present time or lean towards microscopic aspects of the present time and fail to give a holistic picture. And I am very, very happy to say Yuval Noah Harari disproved me entirely.
This writer is a genius for me. The clarity, the synchronicity of ideas, the staunch unbiased stance that is exuded from his book has blown me over.
The book that is just shy of 500 pages packs inside it thousands of years of events, show more their analysis and their interpretations. This book does not just focus solely on events, it throws a completely different light to a lot of things which inadvertently expands your mental horizon. At least, for me, this 5 months of reading this book (I am a painfully slow reader and this should not be taken as a sign of how difficult of a read this book is) have been tremendous learning experiences. I remember being shaken at moments by the profundity of the words that I am reading. This book has made me speechless and amazed more than a dozen times.
I have read a lot of non-fiction books and one thing that I have found constant in all of these books is that you always get to know the stand that the writer takes. As much as being unbiased is valued in this genre, a truly unbiased author is a rare occurrence. But this writer was unbiased from the start to the finish. I was on the lookout throughout the book to find that Gotcha!!! moment where his philosophy will ultimately show up; but I am happy I could not find a single instance where his preference shows up. In fact, the only constant in his philosophy was its fluidity. This unbiasedness is for me the highest highlight of this book.
The only complaint I have (this is a completely personal opinion and complete nitpicking ) is the ultimate and penultimate chapters. I did not like the focus on morality on those chapters and it kind of annoyed me. I felt it was forced and misplace and didn't flow the trajectory of the narration.
Keeping that aside, there is nothing there is to complain about this book.
Do yourself a favour and grab a copy of this book and dive into the brilliance of this man. show less

One of those wonderful books it’s impossible to classify. My edition has gone for ‘popular science’. Nice try, if you take science to be knowledge generally. You might call it history, if you take history to be ‘researches’ as Herodotus meant it.

History does run through the book chronologically like a chain, most prominently in the early parts where Harari deals very well with everything up to the agricultural revolution, but the real delight of the book are the great tangents he heads off on, like pendants from a chain. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that asks so many questions and makes me ask so many too.

Harari has a very particular point of view, but one thing I particularly appreciated was how he would show more very fairly put forward multiple arguments where things are not certainly known. Some of the things he discusses are quite technical, but he explains these things clearly and I actually learnt rather a lot.

Well worth a read if you want to have your brain woken up. I’d have given it five stars but want to give myself wiggle-room in case Homo Deus is even better. show less

A stupid book. Apparently a science book, its not really. Its a little bit of established history, a load of wild claims with no evidence, a series of straw man arguments, a love letter to money, and some hypocritical nonsense. Do you have a friend who thinks they're really clever and knows everything, but doesn't really know anything, and is wrong about stuff all the time because its never occurred to them to do any research on the stuff they opine? That's this book. A little bit of history, some edgelord shouting, and a load of guff (whilst claiming that other peoples guff is guff) I gave up after 250 pages because there was so much bobbins. The stuff that is real is already known, but the fantasies remain fantasies. There are odd show more moments of materialist history, but also lots of wild claims. Throughout the book I made lots of notes and scrawled angrily !!! or [c...n]. This review is too short to include all my thoughts, but here are a few...

"... common chimpanzees have a genetic tendency to live in hierarchical groups..." - [citation needed] that's a big claim that may well be true but I'd like to see the stats, as it were.

"The production of a nuclear warhead requires the cooperation of millions of workers..." - cooperation is a big word for employment. Are the child slaves in Congo cooperating in the process of building a bomb, or are they oppressed by it? Is a person who has a choice between working or starving making a choice or it it forced onto them? To call all work cooperation is an unthinking ideological position coming from a position of unexamined privilege.

There may have been a mutation that turned us from animals into humans, this Cognitive Revolution, but there is no evidence for it. His evidence is that we're here, so it must have happened, is also the same evidence that can be used for every single other theory of how we came to be, including "god made us" and "aliens did it". That isn't science or history, its wild speculation and sub-GCSE level thinking. People don't know about critical thinking and it it is the work of scientists to undermine it with this sort of thing.

"Of all human collective activities the most difficult of all to organise is violence." This man has never tried to organise collectively. It's all really difficult to organise, but violence is no harder than any other. He provides no evidence for this statement, which is directly in contradiction to my own experiences, and so appears to be nonsense.

"There is no way out of the imagined order." This is a massive leap of logic. From accepting that entities such as states and companies are imagined to THERE IS NO WAY OUT... Philosophers have proposed dozens of ways out but none are even mentioned here. This isn't science, or philosophy of science. Its bad science.

"As everyone from ancient times times till today knows, clerks and accountants think in a non-human fashion..." Is this irony or humour? It doesn't look like it. I mean, come on, what the hell? Its just practise ffs. They think in normal human ways just like rest of us. THIS ISN'T SCIENCE, its magical thinking. He provides no evidence for this nonsense, just an assertion, an appeal to common sense basically. Bobbins.

"how did humans organise themselves ... when they lacked the biological instincts" you need to prove that they don't. perhaps we do have the biological instincts - maybe the evidence is that we did :D (irony)

"complex human societies seem to require imagined hierarchies and unjust discrimination" is a very big claim and incredibly deterministic. there is no reason to believe it is necessary.

"... into imagined categories such as superiors, commoners and slaves; whites and blacks; patricians and plebeians; brahmins and shudras; or rich and poor" but some of these aren't imagined categories, they're material conditions or imagined categories based on material conditions. This is really important, and whilst I broadly agree with the point he's making in this section of the book, its infuriating to see.

"...accidental historical circumstances..." refering to circumstances that weren't accidental, but created by people. This is postmodern history at its worst, pretending that people's actions don't have any effects, that slavery, that genocides, that class structures, whatever, just sort of happened and weren't carefullt constructed by human actions, that we slipped and got a monarchy rather than people with swords hit other people with this swords until they were in charge, and then hit anyone who complained with those swords. This isn't accidental, its deliberate human action.

"It is far more likely that ... the precise definition of man and woman varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is." This is a big big statement, tantamount to scientific racism, but at least he recognises that none of the explanations are satisfactory.

on patriarchy: "what accounts for the universality and stability of this system?" delivered as the final line of a chapter, an invitation to the reader to consider with the unwritten indicator that either no-one knows, its just the randomness of life, or that actually maybe patriarchy works. but actually there are many theories, many reasons, and these change in different times and different places. It would be the work of many books to explain, but the explanations are there, and can be at least be touched on. its just easier for him to pretend otherwise. or maybe he doesn't know, hasn;t bothered to do his research. either way, its bad science, bad history, and bad anthropology.

I'll leave it there, I'm a busy person. This is less than half of my critique, I have dozens more marked pages and underlined statements. In short though, this book is a half-arsed piece of bad science pretending to be cutting-edge edgelord for liberals who think they're really clever and that everything they have is because they're really nice and clever and who want a version of history that reinforces their own prejudices and privilege. It is so bad that where I agree with him about either history or anthropology it makes me question the veracity of that knowledge! show less

Beginning back in the furthest reaches of humanity, Harari documents human history with the focus of such basic ideas as intelligence, agriculture, religious belief, commerce, and science. Though the last quarter of the book dragged a bit for me, it was otherwise overall endlessly engaging and eye-opening, with many concepts completely new to me: the idea of "imagined order"; insights into the philosophies of religion, science, etc.; historic events like the Opium Wars, the Battle of Navarino and the collapse of the Mississippi Company — and their far-reaching implications. So much food for thought, especially with respect to economics. Readers should note that the ebook (2018) differs from the print edition (2015). I only discovered show more this because I was alternating between the two. The book is also printed on extra heavy paper, both hardcover and paperback. Even able-bodied, I found its sheer weight vexing at times. Overall an amazing and educational read.

TW for harm to animals: chick culling practices are discussed with a disturbing photo. I'm ashamed to say that it had never once occurred to me that something must happen to all of the male chicks when only female chicks have value to the food industry. The idea of the macerator will haunt me and fill me with human shame to the end of my days. show less

Why does the universe insist on throwing non-fiction books my way, when it knows only too well that fiction is where my heart lies: murder mysteries and love stories (preferably together), in case you're curious.

To be fair, Sapiens boasts a veeeeeery compelling writing style. And at least in the beginning pages would just fly by. But little by little my concentration decided to disengage and from then on things became a chore.

The best thing to come out of this experience, was getting to discuss it during my book club. You see, not being a fan of self-improvement literature, I positively ABHORE the whole marketing catchphrase fad. Which is why I tooootally use it in my instagram posts, but that's beside the point, right. Ahem, anyway... show more So I HATE the PR slogans, moreso in this book. In order to make any such slogan popular, it needs to be concise, so in conjunction with historical evolutionary theories it can lead to some downright ludicrous conclusions: eg. religion and the Peugeot company are both myths used by humanity to collaborate with each other. In different contexts, of course. Which to my cynical atheist self is just mindblowng... ly idiotic.

The bookclub discussion helped me view things like the above as a hyperbole, rather than an intentional plan for brainwashing people. On that note: I knew I hated figures of speech for a reason.

Essentially, this was the biggest flop of my 2022 reading challenge. I had intended to finish it in 3 days, but instead DNF-ed at 75%. I just couldn't manage any more without falling asleep.

Select quotes:
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Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.

Much of human history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies.

Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the industrial revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinction.

The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice, and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

A person who wishes to influence the decisions of governments, organisations and companies must therefore learn to speak in numbers. Experts do their best to translate even ideas such as 'poverty', 'happiness' and 'honesty' into numbers ('the poverty line', 'subjective well-being levels', 'credit rating').

Next time a mosquito buzzes in your ears, accuse her of unnatural behaviour. If she were well-behaved and content with what God gave her, she'd use her wings solely as solar panel.

Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality.

For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as it may, money is also the apogee of human tolerance. show less

In the closing pages after taking a glancing look at possible futures, Harari writes,"The real question facing us is not what do we want to become but . . . what to we want to want?" The final sentence "Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?"

Harari starts with our 'big bang,' the change in our brains 70,000 years ago that set homo sapiens apart from the rest of the pack. The change led to innovation, creativity, avid curiousity, restlessness . . . and the most restless just kept moving--out of Africa and all the way to Australia and the Americas, removing the competition as they went. After something like 60,000 years agricultural practices took root (probably after show more gradually evolving for several millenia). Humans began to live in houses, staying put, then cities and all the rest. Harari pauses to ponder the implications of this change, to wonder how humans cooperate and manage to get along at all. His theory is that we make up stories, about everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. From me, making up my story about me, to collective stories about the origins of the universe and everything in between. In effect, we imagine everything we need to in order to make sense of the impossible amount of information, amounting to chaos, around us. After the interlude he hops up to the next big event which is the Scientific Revolution. Up to this point humans had relied on the fact the Everything was Known. There was a rigid social order that was ordained (and maintained) in the teachings of various religions. The folks at the top were always right and they knew everything. Period. The discoveries of the new scientists, threw all of that out the window. Here was something different. Facts. There were microbes swimming around in water, the earth was so so so not the center of anything. Not even the sun was the center of anything but our puny solar system, but the big change was that (supposedly) science is always willing to admit mistakes and that they don't have all the answers. I wish. In theory, yes. The problem with that is that our own prejudices (fictions) can make admitting mistakes so difficult as to be impossible. There are still people out there, lots of people, who think God (a story) made everything in six days.

Hmmmm. That pretty much brings us up to our present which Harari expects may end soon if we do (insanely?) manage to a) extend life of humans indefinitely and b) invent machine/human hybrids that are not homo sapiens anymore but something as different as we were from Neandertals. That is where he gets to making his final points. (Closest analogy would be that we are now on the threshold of being no wiser than the magician's apprentice. With no magician to rescue us either.) As well he should. The book is, simply, brilliant. Harari is amazingly good at explaining almost anything. The chapter on Money is truly a marvel. (One of our greatest fictions, by the way.) I have a big HOWEVER though. He so does not get it about women. I've lost the exact reference, but somewhere in the agricultural/early science sections he starts skittering over why women haven't contributed much in the way of intellectual advances or leadership until quite recently with no mention at all of why. Women could not contribute. because women died in droves in childbirth, in part because of the size of our human skulls, but mainly due to the lack of medical knowledge and antibiotics. Women died in droves after childbirth and their infants and young children died in droves also. For women living in cities was a disaster health-wise. And I haven't even mentioned post-partum issues from depression to other pregnancy and childbirth-related problems. After that if they survived, they wore themselves out caring for the infants and children that did make it. How could a woman do anything? (I've left out all the domestic chores, oh oops.)

The sheer inability of men to grasp the enormity of the problem of childbirth continues to astound me. It's not quantum physics, fellas. The few women who achieved the 'manly' requirements had no children and most did not marry in the first place. They almost always had money, property and thus some power and saw the wisdom in staying as they were. The scarcity of these women simply demonstrates how few found themselves in such conditions. Who can entirely blame men for regarding women as not good for much? Harari demonstrates his own ignorance or refusal to look at that reality, more than once. That's my big beef. My small beef is at the end when he reveals he knows nothing much about science fiction either (and doesn't know he doesn't know) stating, 'most science fiction plots describe a world in which Sapiens--identical to us--enjoy superior technology such as light-speed space ships and laser guns.' He's thinking of the early stuff and of the most basic space opera, and probably Star Trek, Star Wars, etcetera, (both of which are hybrid space opera/sf) I guess. But real science fiction (and good space opera) is about so much more than that. The good writers take on the big questions, the ones he poses at the end and they explore potential consequences of mucking about with technology. In the last fifty or so years too, women have written some of the most interesting novels about the interface of technology and humans, of non-humans and of different modes of being.

I would categorize [Sapiens] as pretty much a must read. ****1/2 show less