![]() They worked fewer hours and since they had no homes, they also had no household chores this allowed for plenty of free time to play with one another, tell stories and just hang out. Although we have since gained vast knowledge as a collective, Harari argues that on the individual level ancient foragers were "the most knowledgeable and skillful people in history".įor Harari, our foraging ancestors were not only mental and physical supermen, but also enjoyed a much more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle than all the subsequent peasants, workers and office clerks. Hunter-gatherers had to have a much larger knowledge of their surroundings, and possessed vastly superior mental reflexes and physical dexterity which put future generations to shame. To prove his point, Harari waxes poetics about hunter-gatherers and their daily existence: they lived in egalitarian communes where property and love was freely shared, and were much more adept at survival in the wilderness than their descendants who plowed the fields. However, the rest of the book consists largely of author's own musings and thoughts about the human condition and character - while some of these thoughts I find interesting and agreeable (such as our collective belief in the value of money), one thesis he that he put forward struck me as truly bizarre.īasically, Harari considers the agricultural revolution to be "history's biggest fraud", which instead of improvement left humans who settled down to farm worse off and more miserable than their nomadic, foraging ancestors. Sapiens begins strong enough with a very interesting presentation of early human history and development of early human species, which culminated in the rise and eventual dominance of our own - the Homo Sapiens. Because Harari's book is limited to just a single volume (and a relatively short one at that), he has to severely limit his scope to what he considers to be the biggest life-changing developments of our species, which essentially reduces it to a collection of trivia about these events.īut that's not the true flaw of the book. Is this possible? Of course not - histories of individual countries often take up several volumes, and histories of entire civilizations and ultimately an entire specie would take up hundreds if not thousands of volumes. aimed at explaining cosmology to a lay audience, Sapiens aims to provide a readable and concise historical summary of the progress of human evolution - all in under 500 pages. It will certainly not be the next A Brief History of Time, which is often named as the world's top unfinished popular bestseller.īoth A Brief History of Time and Sapiens share a similar, worthy goal - to explain complex issues in a way which can actually be understood and comprehended by most people. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book bound to appear on a large number of coffee tables and favorite lists, and be picked up even by those who normally would not find the time for reading. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?įeaturing 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.ĭr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. ![]() Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Yet today there is only one-homo sapiens. ![]() One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. ![]() From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human”
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