Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari – review
A swash account that starts from the source of the species and ends with the after humans
At least six human species lived on earth 100,000 years ago. There's only one today. Us. Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens.
How was the fight for dominance successful in our species? Why have our forging ancestors gathered to build cities and kingdoms? How were we to believe in gods, nations and rights? How have we been able to trust money, books and legislation? And in the coming millennium what will our world be like?
Yuval Noah Harari spans the entire history of mankind in Sapiens, from the earliest people in the world to the radical and sometimes devastating breakthroughs of the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions.
Harari strongly disagrees that it was inevitable, or even desirable, for sapiens to rise to the top of the food chain. Instead, he writes “humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having 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."
The bulk of Sapiens is a tour-de-force explanation of the vagaries, accidents and inexplicable events that took “an insignificant ape" to “the verge of becoming a god."
Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future
A SMALL SUMMARY
Sapiens: One of the most interesting and informative books I have ever read is a short history of humankind. This book, because of its incredibly good writing storey and facts, has changed my view of things and inspired many others who I know. This book should be an example for all books on human history, because we are hateful and selfish, but are able to do great things, even if we will not admit it, and have destroyed almost all the world's fauna. We can create myths and stories that last tens of thousands of years. We can combine and co-ordinate at an unbelievable speed like the world never before has seen. This is the story of our kind and its beginnings are by far as or more important than the present and the future. And the future. For this breathtaking masterpiece, I congratulate Yuval Noah Harari and recommend it for everybody out to at least twice read.