Sapiens

“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari is a rare work. A truly interdisciplinary telling of the rise of Homo sapiens to be the dominant species on earth, Harari’s book tells the story of humanity from there emergency to the present moment (and possible futures) in a mere 466 pages. Hariri is a that most rare breed of scholar: a generalist who can weave a grand story with deep insight and artfulness. Moreover, the book is fun— not only is Hariri an author of big ideas, he is also a fantastic writer.

There are too many ideas in this book to discuss here. What do you expect with a book that tells the entire history of humanity from start to (perhaps) finish? I purposefully want to keep away describing each detail. The story is too complex, and Hariri tells it much better than I can. The book is one that is well worth reading slowly.

If there was one essential point that provides the foundation to Hariri’s text, it would be the need for large-scale human communities to be developed and maintained through multiple inter-subjective realities. These are stories that are not inherently or objectively true and yet are essential to the functioning of human society. What I enjoy about his use of this idea is that it does not say that these things are true and need to be followed blindly. Nor does he say that we must arrogantly reject them out of hand as not true and therefore not important. He says that these ideas are simultaneously not true and very important. He playfully says that many of the great religious traditions are inter-subjective realities but so is money, capitalism, nations, human rights, gender, aristocracy, and even science. Essentially, these are narratives or stories that we tell and bind us closer together.

One smaller point that resonated with me was Hariri’s discussion of the cruelty that humanity has wrought against other animals on earth. This idea is a reoccurring presence in the book. Sapiens overtook their cousins like the Neanderthals violently. They destroyed most of the big animals on all continents. Sapiens domesticated animals and kept them in virtual slavery, which has only become more cruel and barbarous as a logical consequence of industrialization. This point shows a deeper truth: that Sapiens collective rise has been at the expense of much individual suffering.

I finished this book and its ideas and concepts still rattle around in my brain. Its lucid writing and deft handling of thought-provoking questions will challenge your own identity and will make you think about the world. I plan on assigning it as the back-bone text for a course I am going to teach at a university on the idea of ideas. I cannot recommend this book more highly.

It's not very often one finds a book that challenges and re draws the lines that define what we think we are. This is one. Reading Sapiens has made me question everything about being a human. Why do we define ourselves as such? And where are the boundaries?
What are the levels of reality that exist and how do they affect us... Everything from fire to societies to money to the genome and artificial intelligence. Mankind since it walked out of the jungles (so to speak) and up until it's facing of its true nature. Are we gods? Can we be? Should we be?
All of this questions pondered and asked in a nice, friendly, even funny tone that shouldn't scare away even the newest among us the anthropologist wannabes.
My personal highlight was the realization of the importance of stories, as maybe our biggest invention as a species... and our ability to share and belief those stories that has in the end allowed for us to create the world we live in (and all the horrors and wonders within it)
It is easily a 5/5 book in my opinion, a must read and I know I will be returning to it and recommending it to almost everyone who I come in contact with.
Colour me mind-blown.

Some books can follow you around. That appeared to have happened in the past few months with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (HarperCollins). It just seemed to be popping up everywhere.

I got curious and before long, I placed a reservation request to the library. The moment I got my hands on it, I got engrossed, immediately. Sapiens, is an extraordinary and provocative book, often funny and wonderfully written. Its scope is ambitious, it traces the evolution of our species from the rise of our ancient and insignificant ancestors, around 70,000 years ago, when Sapiens “started doing very special things,” to our current place in the modern, technological age of the twenty-first century.

In his book, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to answer how we did it, how humans succeeded to become the most significant species, to basically rule the planet Earth. His thesis is that Homo Sapiens has succeeded to become the dominant species and control the world because of his ability to cooperate flexibly in very big numbers. Humans are the only animals that can do that. Using their imagination, they are able to create imaginative realities, such as religions, empires, states, ideologies, companies, human rights, and money. The latter is the most important story ever, because it has enabled humans to construct complex and sophisticated economic cooperative networks.

Three big revolutions shaped the Sapiens. First, the ‘cognitive’ revolution, about 11,000 years ago when humans began to change the way they live, by shifting from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies. Second, it was the ‘scientific’ revolution which began about 500 years ago when humans discovered their own ignorance, and they decided to do something about it. It was the beginning of science which brought major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation and had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions, in Britain initially, and then in Europe and North America. It also led to the Industrial revolution, about 250 years ago.

We are now experiencing the third one, the ‘biotechnological’ evolution which started after the World War II, about 70 years ago. Harari’s conclusion is that humans are about to change again and he is trying to identify the new possibilities and choices we are facing. We are entering a new era where the inevitable merger of human and machine might signal the end of Sapiens as a biological species, and the beginning of post-humans, bioengineered cyborgs that will be able to live forever.

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