Review —

Sapiens : A Brief History Of Humankind

Sapiens is a history of the human race, from pre-historic humans evolving through different ways, then through the Cognitive Revolution, then the Agricultural Revolution, and then modern history. At the end, Harari discusses the future of the human race, and how we might change with gene-editing and so on.What Harari does brilliantly is tie all of this enormous history together, and put it all in context. This storytelling and contextualisation alone makes this worth reading.

Sapiens has an interesting premise, what happened to humankind soon after they evolved into thinking beings? It encapsulates human history in less than 500 pages; and its strength lies on Harari’s friendly, easy-to-understand prose. But the cracks start to show once we progress through his analysis.

Reading a history where humans were once middling in the food chain. Reading a history that stresses how little we’ve changed since then. Reading a history that relates our current behaviours to evolutionary instincts (for example, the survival instincts that validate binge-eating). These are perspectives that I’d never been forced to seriously consider before. But why?

First of all, let me say, Sapiens, you are truly amazing for ruling the world with your tiny body. How amazing we’re to build the world because we have different thought than any other animals, we make community and make it bigger to fill our interests and need. I think about it again, in this era I meet a lot of people online, I don’t know about their identity, never met them in real life, but I can talk and discuss with them about anything. We organized things from our own countries, and it works. Amazing. The thing that no one of animals can beat our ability [as of now]. That’s why, we’re so cocky that we don’t want to mention ourselves as animal. We made the term for ourselves as Human which is different creature than animals. We have a higher level and can’t be compare to them. That’s what we believe.

Sapiens traces the development of consciousness, above all else. 100,000 years ago Homo Sapiens were an insignificant animal – but today we dominate the planet. At some point the evolution of thinking superseded biological evolution. Much of our 'success' hinges on the importance of the myths and legends – the fictions of our imagination – that have played such a vital role in the development of culture, ideology, religion, economics, science, and ultimately – the mind.

I can’t explain everything what I read in the book, because so many things were told and explained. Try to read it yourself with an open-mind then you can absorb the knowledge and you can decide either you want to accept it or not. The book has a good structure of history. You can connect it based on the period of time since the pre-history era until now so that everything makes sense. Kuddos to Yuval for wording the book so well, so that it is not boring to read. I can say, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read. If i’m allowed to give ratings for this book, I would probably give it 9.5/10.

See you in the next book!