Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari which is based on a series of lectures that Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2015. The book focuses on evolution of Homo Sapiens and inspects humankind right from the ancient stone age up till twenty-first century.
Harari inspects humankind within the framework of natural and social sciences. He divides the evolution of humanity into four breakthroughs:
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The cognitive revolution that shaped the human imagination
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The agricultural revolution happened when humans started domesticating plants and left their former selves (the hunter-gatherer state) behind them
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The gradual formation of Human unities happened when people began to form kingdoms and empires
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The scientific revolution that helped shape the modern world
One of the major arguments that the author makes is that humans (or sapiens) dominate the world because they can cooperate flexibly in large numbers – unlike other species. He explains most concepts like Gods, Nations, money, and human rights are a product of collective imagination. These concepts work only because people believe in them, and biologically, they do not have an existence.
“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.” – Yuval Noah Harari
Harari claims that while agriculture brought a significant revolution in human lives, it is also one of the reasons why humans are now tied down. Humans left their free nomadic lifestyle and were now permanently locked down close to their food sources. He says, “Sapiens didn’t domesticate wheat, but it domesticated us.”
“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” – Yuval Noah Harari
The other aspect of the agricultural revolution is that as humans evolved, the co-evolving species like cows, pigs and other domestic animals devolved. For Example, cows, chickens and other domestic animals roamed freely during the nomadic age, but now humans have caged them in miserable conditions.
“Happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.” – Yuval Noah Harari
The book later dives into the evolution of religions and dabbles into the future of the human species with respect to genetic engineering, immortality, and inorganic life. Harari also evaluates happiness as a measure of the success of the human species. He argues that indefinite wealth does not necessarily constitute increased happiness. Instead, people with their families tend to be slightly happier than those who live alone.
Finally, Harari explores the possibilities of the future of sapiens. He talks about human beings becoming cyborgs or contemplates the possibility that perhaps some other form may take over us or we might become (evolve) in different species altogether – thereby becoming or coming to close to becoming Gods.
“A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.” – Yuval Noah Harari
“Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.” – Yuval Noah Harari
“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.” – Yuval Noah Harari
Final thoughts
Harari evaluates the entire evolution of the human species through a singular lens of biology. While this is not the incorrect way, it is crucial to understand that some concepts do not fit this lens. His theories of how societies function and how humans collectively thought as a species were fascinating, but at the same time, his claims of nations and money being entirely non-existent are hard-to-swallow pills.
The book is an excellent source of knowledge and understanding about Sapiens as a species, but not every concept of the book adds up. When seen from a practical standpoint (or biological, as Harari terms it), it’s true that concepts like Human Rights or nation as an entity do not exist, but it doesn’t make those concepts obsolete. Another aspect which Harari hushed up in his writing was that of the future of Earth as an ecosystem. He briefly brushes the subject at places, but it does far from justice to it. Global warming and ozone depletion are as urgent as the human-cyborg connection, and the book does a mediocre job connecting those to the fate of Sapiens.