Book Review: Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind

The book is written by professor Yuval Noah Harari, who serves at the University of Jerusalem and specializes in world history.

The ten takeaways and highlights that I got out of this book are outlined below:

1. This is an interesting and informative book. While it is based on facts, the author also presents his own vision and opinions in a clear and engaging manner, including broad areas like anthropology, history, economics, psychology, etc. One of its trade-offs is precisely that, at some point, its content is driven not just by informing the reader based on such facts, but by presenting a particular point of view based on them – which other specialists may agree on or not.
2. The vision that Harari outlines about humankind as a species, including both the positive and negative features that characterize us, are stunning. The fact that we can create myths and stories that unite us around a shared vision and goal is a simple but very powerful concept.
3. Harari states that, for the first half of our existence we potter along unremarkably; then we undergo a series of revolutions: first, the Cognitive revolution – about 70,000 years ago we start to behave in far more ingenious ways than before (for reasons that are still obscure) and we spread rapidly across the planet. About 11,000 years ago we entered the Agricultural revolution, converting in increasing numbers from foraging (hunting and gathering) to farming. The Scientific revolution began about 500 years ago, followed by the Industrial revolution about 250 years ago and which triggered the Information revolution about 50 years ago. Finally, he claims we are entering a Biotechnological revolution, which is still at its early stage.
4. Harari also suspects that such Biotechnological revolution signals the end of Sapiens as a species: he claims that we will be replaced by bioengineered post-humans, ‘amortal’ cyborgs, capable of living forever.
5. The development of language is another moment highlighted by the author. Humankind becomes able to think sharply about abstract matters, cooperate in large numbers, and, perhaps most crucially, gossip. He presents the rise of religion and the slow overpowering of polytheisms by more or less ‘toxic monotheisms’.
6. He also addresses the evolution of money and, more importantly, credit. There is, connectedly, the spread of empires and trade as well as the rise of capitalism as a key moment in history related to all of this.
7. The influence of agriculture is another topic that the author addresses. He argues that “the agricultural revolution was history’s biggest fraud“. More often than not it brought a worse diet, longer hours of work, greater risk of starvation, crowded living conditions, greatly increased susceptibility to disease, new forms of insecurity and uglier forms of hierarchy. Harari thinks we may have been better off in the stone age, and he has powerful things to say about the wickedness of factory farming, concluding with one of his many superlatives: “modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history“.
8. He accepts the common view that the fundamental structure of our emotions and desires hasn’t been touched by any of these revolutions: “our eating habits, our conflicts and our sexuality are all a result of the way our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, airplanes, telephones and computers … Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah.” He gives a familiar illustration – our powerful desires for sugar and fat have led to the widespread availability of foods that are primary causes of unhealthiness and ugliness. The consumption of pornography is another good example. It’s just like overeating: if the minds of pornography addicts could be seen as bodies, they would look just like the grossly obese.
9. Ammortality is another topic addressed by the author. He actually states that amortality isn’t immortality, because it will always be possible for us to die by violence. Harari is plausibly sceptical about how much good it will do us since, as amortals, we may become hysterically and disablingly cautious.
10. He also draws on well-known research that shows that a person’s happiness from day to day has remarkably little to do with their material circumstances. He argues that “Certainly money can make a difference – but only when it lifts us out of poverty. After that, more money changes little or nothing. Certainly a lottery winner is lifted by her luck, but after about 18 months her average everyday happiness reverts to its old level”.

This 13-minute interview summarizes several insights presented by Harari in this book, plus other complementary ideas, books and initiatives he has in place.

Overall, much of Sapiens is extremely interesting, and it is often well expressed. As several other reviews of this book outline, however, the attractive features of the book are sometime overwhelmed by ‘exaggeration’ and ‘sensationalism’.