Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind. By: Yuval Noah Harari

Time spent reading: 19 Hours.

The title of the book pulled me towards it. I wondered why the writer had specifically mentioned Sapiens and Humankind so prominently. The book goes on to explain the reason and works as an eye opener in expanding the knowledge and understanding of the humane race.

The Guardian has listed the book as among the ten "best brainy books of the decade

Short Summary

A short note about the writer Yuval Noah Harari. Harari first specialized in medieval history and military history. He completed his PHD. Degree at Jesus College, Oxford. He is an Israeli historian and a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yuval is prodigy, having thought himself to read at the age of 3 and started studying in a special class for gifted children at the age of 8. He is a very intelligent man and you can see that not only in his writing but also in the flow of his book.

We begin our journey from the single cell organism and how they develop into complex living organisms. We are introduced to the early humans. Its is explained to us how we are not the only human to have evolved out of apes. Harari works within the framework of natural sciences laying particular emphasis on the social sciences as the key and deciding factor as to what we as a species did with our limitation.

Harari writes about Homo Sapiens journey from Stone Age to the 21st century into 4 extremely well though out, researched and presented parts. He predicts a very grim future for the Homo Sapiens as a species and in pure mathematics announces a truth that we all sort of know in the corner of our hearts. When it is all done and dusted Homo Sapiens are a mere blip in the timeline of the universe

My Review

The good thing about History is that in true sense of the narrative it is a story. Anthropology is a science and very tough one at that, but credit to the writer, he has done a tremendous job of shielding the reader from the all the boring stuff that only scientist or social science students find interesting. The book begins with a grim warning that we the race of Homo Sapiens will stop to exist in the next couple of hundred years. As a reader you feel that the reminder of the book can only go downhill after that but Harari does a wonderful job in keeping the reader engaged with his deep insights and wonderful analysis.

The book is about a hard science, but it is written in a story format. The writing is easy to follow and there are plenty of visual references to keep the reader engaged. We often talk about a point in human history where we separated ourselves from our ancestors the ape. Lot of experts have spoken about things like our ability to walk on two legs, the discovery of fire and our mastery over it, the innovation of the wheel or the advent of farming, Harrari put the pros and cons of each of the arguments and later giving his opinion puts it down to our unique ability to think and communicate with our species. Its not the actual fire or the wheel that changed the fortune of humans, it what they learned to do with it that mattered.

In the latter chapter Harari also puts an argument in front of the reader; he proposes us to evaluate weather new innovations which were meant to make our lives simpler have really helped us to live a better life or has it added stress and anxiety to the entire populous. He gives us the example of farming, before humans settled down to form permanent settlement and give up their hunter gatherer lifestyle they lived better lives, with the land providing adequate variation in their diets, people would have to work less to collect whatever was required for the day to eat and have more time to spend with their families. Human were less dependent on one particular type of crop for their survival, a crop which could easily gets damaged due to untimely rain or too much sun or disease. There were far less famines in the lives of hunter gatherers than that of the farming communities. He goes on to explain how the internet and the computer instead of making our lives simpler have bound us in a circle of never-ending working hours. It does not matter what time of the day it is or where you are, you are expected to check your email or your text and barring a privileged few you are expected to react and reply. Not doing so immediately is considered rude and looked upon as a sign of inefficiency.

Harrari is a vegan and the follower of Vipassana, while there is no influence of the later in the writing, I personally feel he lets his Vegan lifestyle enter his writing specially when he describes the lives of the domesticated animals since the agricultural revolution. He has point and describes its as “one of the worst crimes in history”. Harrari sees and eminent threat in pursuing the arms race and warns that through the progress in the artificial intelligence “by 2050 we will have a new class of people-the useless class. People who are not just unemployed but unemployable. He call for the human race to realise the treat that it is causing itself and wants nations to come together to solve the eminent threats of ecological collapse, nuclear war and technological disruption.