Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind -- Yuval Noah Harari

Experiencing the book

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a historical pop-science non-fiction book which serves to map out the entire human history since the dawn of “Humans”. The author makes a distinction between Humans and Homo Sapiens. The first part of the book is on this distinction and is by far my favorite of all. It discusses about how Homo Sapiens have eliminated all other species of Humans (Neanderthal and Homo Erectus). The author tries to argue what made Homo Sapiens prevail by defining terms like “Imagined Order”, “Shared Myths” and “Collective Imaginations”. This section, is the Cognitive revolution.

The author then moves on to hunter gatherer lifestyle and the progressive shift to agriculture revolution. This section of the book was felt a bit more opinionated for my taste but it was enjoyable regardless. The story continued in a flow to the age of scientific revolution and the age of ignorance. This has to be the 2nd best section which indicated than birth of science was through realisation of ignorance. I definitely gained a new perspective as a result. Finally industrial revolution is discussed through the lens of environmental damages and how other species are nearing their extinctions.

The next section discussed influences of money, religions, gender and colonisation in the modern history (1500s-present day). The author discusses the importance of money as a shared currency and it’s power to change any resource into any other resource. Then the author moves to religion and argues that Capitalism, Liberalism…are nothing but modern religions too. He discusses the role of gender and how it is puzzling that we live in a patriarchal society but there is no explanation as to why. The history of colonisation is discussed through scientific revolution and how the conquerors as well as scientists wanted to know and control more of the world. It ended with declaring that we now live in a unified global empire. This section was more informative than interesting, the tone becomes slightly boring but I liked it nonetheless.

In the final (and arguably weakest) section of the book, the author discussed possibilities of trans-humanism and cyborgs. The author argues whether Humans are happier than ever before and discusses how different religions (especially Buddhism) define Happiness, as opposed to Science which refers to it via brain chemicals. This was the most speculative section and felt a little boring to discuss the possibilities in the volatile world we live in.

The theme it revolves around

The book revolved around the themes of History in the sense of revolutions: Cognitive, Agricultural, Scientific and Industrial. On the parallel, it revolves around Biology and how culture is what birthed History from Biology. It discusses Theology, Politics, Economics, Psychology and Social Studies along the lines of gender, caste and race. Finally, towards the end, the book touches on modern science and trans-humanism and study of human happiness. The book by nature has multiple different themes to it and tries to view the world as a dynamic mixture of all the studies. It becomes a hodgepodge, but nothing less is expected. However, the attempt here deserves a mention and a credit

The thoughts I had during and after completing it

I am mixed-positive review of the book. On the one hand, I really wish I had read this book earlier in the life when I needed more perspective on how society functions. The book reminds me of “The Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawkins, in which the author tries to map the history of entire universe (and the scope of science). The book helped me gained at least a few more perspectives in life which will stick with me for a long time. However lack of credible resources give the book a sense of “Trust me bro” vibes which makes it, difficult to distinguish between author’s opinion and facts. And this I believe is the book’s biggest downfall.

Negatives

My biggest concern of the book is author’s story-telling method bleeds into the factual knowledge. It becomes harder to separate between author’s opinions and facts. Furthermore, the book focuses on a small set of data points and tries to generalise and predict history which feels dodgy to say the least. However, if looked at from the perspective of it being a pop-science story, the book’s meaning and purpose changes drastically therefore it is hard to classify the above mentioned negatives as truly negative

Ratings: 8/10

Evolution only cares about pro-genesis, not quality of life of an individual.