“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari is a thought-provoking exploration of the history of Homo sapiens, tracing the evolution of our species from its origins in Africa to the present day. Harari offers insights into the key milestones and developments that have shaped human history, from the cognitive revolution to the agricultural revolution and beyond.
Harari begins by examining the cognitive revolution, which he identifies as the defining moment in human history. He argues that around 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens underwent a cognitive leap that enabled them to develop complex language, communication, and abstract thinking, allowing them to cooperate in larger groups and dominate other species.
The author explores the impact of the agricultural revolution on human societies, highlighting the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to settled agricultural communities. He examines how the domestication of plants and animals led to the rise of sedentary societies, the development of cities, and the emergence of complex social structures.
Harari discusses the role of myths, religions, and ideologies in shaping human societies and providing a sense of meaning and purpose to human existence. He examines how shared beliefs and narratives have been used to justify social hierarchies, political systems, and cultural norms throughout history.
The author explores the rise of empires and the spread of imperialism, highlighting the role of military conquest, economic exploitation, and cultural assimilation in shaping the course of human history. He examines how empires have risen and fallen, leaving a lasting impact on the cultures, languages, and political systems of the regions they conquered.
Harari discusses the impact of capitalism and industrialization on human societies, highlighting the economic, social, and environmental changes brought about by the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. He examines how industrialization transformed economies, societies, and daily life, leading to unprecedented levels of economic growth and technological innovation.
The author explores the role of science and technology in shaping human history, highlighting the impact of scientific discoveries, technological advancements, and medical breakthroughs on human societies and the natural world. He examines how scientific knowledge has transformed our understanding of the universe, ourselves, and our place in the world.
Harari discusses the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, including climate change, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. He examines how these global challenges pose existential threats to human civilization and the planet, and explores possible strategies for addressing them.
The author examines the future of Homo sapiens and speculates on the potential directions of human evolution and development. He explores how advances in technology, genetics, and neuroscience may reshape human societies, identities, and consciousness in the coming centuries.
In conclusion, “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” offers a compelling and insightful journey through the history of Homo sapiens, providing valuable perspectives on the origins, development, and future of our species. Harari’s multidisciplinary approach and engaging narrative style make the book accessible to readers from diverse backgrounds, making it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the human story.
The hunter-gatherer way of life differed significantly from region to region and from season to season, but on the whole foragers seem to have enjoyed a more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle than most of the peasants, shepherds, labourers and office clerks who followed in their footsteps.
The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in turn. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.
Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprit were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.
The currency of evolution is neither hunger or pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, not by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If no more DNA copies remain, the species is extinct, just as a company without money is bankrupt. If a species boasts many DNA copies, it is a success, and the species flourishes. From such a perspective, 1,000 copies are always better than a hundred copies. This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.
The average person in Jericho of 8500BC lived a harder life than the average person in Jericho of 9500BC or 13,000BC. But nobody realized what was happening. Every generation continued to live like the previous generation, making only a small improvements here and there in the way things were done. Paradoxically, a series of “improvements”, each of which was meant to make life easier, added up to a millstone around the necks of these farmers.
Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated? People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.
In evolutionary terms, cattle represent one of the most successful animal species ever to exist. At the same time, they are some of the most miserable animals on the planet.
It was no accident that kings and prophets styled themselves as shepherds and likened the way they and the gods cared for their people to a shepherd’s care for his flock.
“I know that superiors, commoners and slaves are not inherently different kinds of people. But if we believe that they are, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.”
It’s likely that more than a few readers squirmed in their chairs while reading the preceding paragraphs. Most of us today are educated to react in such a way. It is easy to accept that Hammurabi’s Code was a myth, but we do not want to hear that human rights are also a myth. If people realize that human rights exist only in the imagination, isn’t there a danger that our society will collapse? Voltaire said about God that “There is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night”. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo Sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.
Such fears are well justified. A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them. In order to safeguard an imagined order, continuous and strenuous efforts are imperative.
Islamic fundamentalists could never have toppled Saddam Hussein by themselves. Instead they enraged the USA by the 9/11 attacks, and the USA destroyed the Middle Eastern china shop for them.
If the Jungle Law comes back into force, it will not be the fault of the terrorists.
This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.
Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and begin to notice possibilities that our ancestors could not imagine, or didn’t want us to imagine. By observing the accidental chain of events that led us here, we realize how our very thoughts and dreams took shape - and we can begin to think and dream differently. Studying history will not tell us what to choose, but at least it gives us more options.
Movements seeking to change the world often begin by rewriting history, thereby enabling people to reimagine the future. Whether you want workers to go on a general strike, women to take possession of their bodies, or oppressed minorities to demand political rights - the first step is to retell their history. The new history will explain that “our present situation is neither natural or eternal. Things were different once. Only a string of chance events created the unjust world we know today. If we act wisely, we can change that world, and create a much better one.” This is why Marxists recount the history of capitalism; why feminists study the formation of patriarchal societies; and why African American commemorate the horrors of the slave trade. They aim not to perpetuate the past, but rather to be liberated from it.
Having read this short history of the lawn, when you now come to plan your dream house you might think twice about having a lawn in the front yard. You are of course still free to do it. But you are also free to shake off the cultural cargo bequeathed to you and imagine for yourself a Japanese rock garden, or some altogether new creation. This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom - we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.
You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, but it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just imagine.
With regard to other animals, human have long since become gods. We don’t like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods.
We are suddenly showing unprecedented interest in the fate of so-called lower life forms, perhaps because we are about to become one. If and when computer programs attain superhuman intelligence and unprecedented power, should we begin valuing these programs more than we value humans? Do humans have some magical spark, in addition to higher intelligence and great power, which distinguishes them from pigs, chickens, chimpanzees and computer programs alike? If yes, where did that spark come from, and why are we certain that an AI could never acquire it?
Already thousands of years ago philosophers realized that there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone other than oneself has a mind. Indeed, even in the case of other humans, we just assume they have consciousness - we cannot know that for certain. Perhaps I am the only being in the entire universe who feels anything, and all other humans and animals are just mindless robots? Perhaps I am dreaming, and everyone I meet is just a character in my dream? Perhaps I am trapped inside a virtual world, and all the beings I see are merely simulations?
Throughout history, disciplined armies easily routed disorganized hordes, and unified elites dominated the disorderly masses. In 1914, for example, 3 million Russian nobleman, officials and business people lorded it over 180 million peasants and workers. The Russian elite knew how to cooperate in defence of its common interests, whereas the 180 million commoners were incapable of effective mobilization. Indeed, much of the elite’s efforts focused on ensuring that the 180 million people at the bottom would never learn to cooperate.
In order to mount a revolution, numbers are never enough. Revolutions are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses. If you want to launch a revolution, don’t ask yourself, “How many people support my ideas?” Instead, ask yourself, “How many of my supporters are capable of effective collaboration?” The Russian Revolution finally erupted not when 180 million peasants rose against the tsar, but rather when a handful of communists placed themselves at the right place at the right time. In 1917, at a time when the Russian upper and middle classes numbered at least 3 million people, the Communist Party had just 23,000 members. The communists nevertheless gained control of the vast Russian Empire because they organized themselves well. When authority in Russia slipped from the decrepit hands of the tsar and the equally shaky hands of Kerensky’s provisional government, the communists seized it with alacrity, gripping the reins of power like a bulldog locking its jaws on a bone.
The communists didn’t release their grip until the late 1980s. Effective organization kept them in power for eight long decades and they eventually fell due to defective organization.
The value of money is not the only thing that might evaporate once people stop believing in it. The same can happen to laws, gods and even entire empires. One moment they are busy shaping the world, and the next moment they no longer exist. Zeus and Hera were once important powers in the Mediterranean basin, but today they lack any authority because nobody believes in them. The Soviet Union could once destroy the entire human race, yet it ceased to exist at the stroke of a pen.
How rational it is to risk the future of humankind on the assumption that future scientists will make some unknown planet-saving discovery? Most of the presidents, ministers and CEOs who run the world are very rational people. Why are they willing to take such a gamble? Maybe because they don’t think they are gambling on their own personal future. Even if bad comes to worst and science cannot hold off the deluge, engineers could still build a hi-tech Noah’s Ark for the upper caste, while leaving billions of others to drown. The belief in this hi-tech Ark is currently one of the biggest threats to the future of humankind and of the entire ecosystem. People who believe in the hi-tech Ark should not be put in charge of the global ecology, for the same reason that people who believe in a heavenly afterlife should not be given nuclear weapons.
And what about the poor? Why aren’t they protesting? If and when the deluge comes, they will bear the full cost of it. However, they will also be the first to bear the cost of economic stagnation. In a capitalist world the lives of the poor improve only when the economy grows. Hence they are unlikely to support any steps to reduce future ecological threats that are based on slowing down present-day economic growth. Protecting the environment is a very nice idea, but those who cannot pay their rent are worried about their overdraft far more than about melting ice caps.