My Thoughts on Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Week 1 of the 52 weeks = 52 Books Challenge – Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

I recently read the inspirational ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’ and was quite moved by the profound simplicity of Naval’s thoughts. I came across his list of recommended reads on the Almanack website and decided to start my challenge with the books on this list. Some of these had been on my personal To-Be-Read list as well. 

For Week 1, I picked and read Sapiens, a highly recommended book by a now world famous Historian and sociologist, Yuval Noah Harari.

Sapiens is an important book if you want to understand the whys and hows of humankind’s current state. We have all read about the history of humankind in school textbooks. What struck me was how dogmatic those text book accounts can be. 

They way we are usually taught history, it leaves no room for imagination or interpretation. Until I read this book, Somehow I had this idea that other human species never coexisted with Homo Sapiens in ancient past and that homo sapiens have evolved from other species over time indicating there was no overlap. 

This book points to evidence of coexistence of several ‘homo’ species and then goes on to theorize about the ideas, inventions and traits that have led to the success of Homo Sapiens over all other human species, rather over all other mammal species on earth.

These are some of the insights I found interesting and striking:

• Sapiens’ dizzying climb to the top of the food chain – Some of our species’ present day eccentricities – like the urge to hoard calories and gorge on high sugar foods despite having access to an abundant food supply, our fight or flight response, might have resulted from a fast climb from being prey to the ultimate predator. Humans were initially in the middle of the food chain and had evolutionary instincts that all other middle-of-the-food-chain animals have. But, we have quickly climbed to the top of the food chain in a very short time and hence the remnants of instincts that helped us survive in the ancient times.
• Impact of Discovery of fire and cooking – When ancient human species discovered fire, they started cooking their food. With cooking, a large gut was no longer needed and humans could do with smaller stomachs and intestines. They also needed far fewer calories to digest and that made way for larger brain and more brain power. They could also go on less food. 
• Unique language – Larger brain does not necessarily mean intelligence. We were still dependent on  the painfully slow evolutionary process to become more intelligent. What made us get over this dependence on biological evolution was our unique language. Our language allowed us to talk about non-physical things – stories, myths, abstract concepts and ‘gossip’. With the advent of ‘gossip’ and stories, we could form bigger and more powerful groups that made way for cultural progress and sapiens were able to leapfrog over biological progress.
• Stories and Society – Sapiens’ story telling ability and the ability to make others believe in those stories might have been the advent of villages, towns and cities. Belief in common myths and stories are how we could get over this critical threshold of groups of ‘150’. Studies prove most mammals are not able to form groups larger than 150 as they are not able to trust a higher number of individuals from their species. These ‘Stories’ is what enabled sapiens to trust strangers and that led to barter, trade, specialization, division of labor and ultimately collaboration. This is how religions, nations, ideas come to be. Sapiens trust other sapiens who believe in the same stories and distrust those whose stories are different. This forms the basis of all human conflicts to this day.
• The last affluent Society – The author has theorized that Hunter-gatherers might have been the last affluent human society before agriculture ‘domesticated’ our lot forever. They would hunt and gather food for a few hours every day and then spend the rest of the time enjoying their bounty. Once they exhausted the resources of one area, they would just move to another area. They would enjoy a variety of foods and enjoyed good health and contentment. They might have been the last society that didn’t have to worry about the future.
• The great fraud?– The author argues that agricultural revolution caused a population explosion and was a great evolutionary success but brought on unprecedented individual suffering. Claim to farming land might have caused a lot of territorial fighting. Eating just one type of food- mainly wheat and rice caused a lot of diseases and malnutrition. Agriculture ‘domesticated’ Sapiens and a lot of other animals for good. 
• History is not ‘good for all’ – History is just history. It does not go in the direction of the best outcome. The more we know about history, the harder it is to know why something happened the way it did.
• ‘Empires’ were formed out of curiosity – Why only some nations expanded their empires and not others? It was their genuine curiosity and their belief that they don’t know much about the world that caused them to set out for scientific, geographic and political exploratory expeditions to far corners of the world and win more territories for their nations. These empires had far reaching consequences on the development, art and culture of the ‘colonies’ that continues to shape them decades after attaining freedom.
• ‘Nuclear race’ might lead to global peace – This is a paradox of post modern times – the more nuclear weapons the nations acquire, the less likely they are to engage in full scale wars. There might never be another world war.
• One global culture – In earlier times, culture has thrived in concentrated pockets but scientific revolution brings about the same ideas and culture almost everywhere in the world. The world might be heading towards one common culture.
•  What Next? – With the advent of genetic engineering, humans might be on the verge of becoming a new species altogether that might not be ‘human’ at all. The next wave of biological and technological changes might change our identity to such an extent that we can’t even fathom what might become of our kind.

This book filled in a lot of gaps in my understanding of our history and the credit goes to excellent narrative ability of the author. The insights have changed my thinking forever!