Overview
Book Title: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Year: 2011 (original), 2014 (English version)
Cameron’s Rating: 8.5/10
My Thoughts
I found Sapiens to be an enjoyable read that gave a good overview of the history of our species. The book presented some interesting ideas such as “myths” or shared cultural narratives being the pillars that have allowed our societies to develop so quickly in recent centuries.
The author also brought up the interesting point that the evolutionary process doesn’t need to improve the quality of our lives, it just needs to strive to ensure greater proliferation of our DNA.
Before reading this book I had never considered that perhaps hunter gatherer tribes actually enjoyed a higher quality of life than the farmers and peasants that followed them.
The idea of humans being more optimistic about the future than the past being a relatively new phenomenon was also new to me.
Overall, I found Sapiens to be a solid dive for beginner’s into the history of our species.
Best Quotes
- “The heated debates about Homo sapiens natural way of life miss the main point. Ever since the cognitive revolution there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for sapiens. There are only cultural choices from among a bewildering pallet of possibilities.”
- “… The evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If no more DNA copies remain, the species is extinct just as a company without money is bankrupt. If a species boasts many DNA copies it is a success and the species flourishes. From such a perspective, 1000 copies are always better than 100 copies. This is the essence of the agricultural revolution — the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”
- “One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it.”
- “Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.”
- “Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”
- “A person who does not crave cannot suffer.”
- “So why study history? Unlike physics or economics history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future, but to widen our horizons; to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.”
- “This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology. A need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction.”
- “Most males spend their lives toiling, worrying, competing, and fighting instead of enjoying peaceful bliss because their DNA manipulates them for its own selfish aims. Like Satan, DNA uses fleeting pleasures to tempt people and place them in its power.”
- “Throughout history the upper classes always claimed to be smarter, stronger, and generally better than the underclass. They were usually deluding themselves. A baby born to a poor peasant family was likely to be as intelligent as the crown prince. With the help of medicinal capabilities the pretentions might soon become an objective reality.”
- “History teaches us that what seems to be just around the corner may never materialize due to unforeseen barriers and that other unimagined scenarios will in fact come to pass.”
My Notes
- Because humans walk on two legs instead of all fours, women’s hips became narrower. This resulted in it becoming more difficult to give birth. This is one reason humans may give birth to offspring prior to the offspring being able to do much of anything independently. Premature births (at least in comparison to other species) gave the woman and child a higher likelihood of survival.
- The ability to use fire and cook is likely linked to the shortening of the human intestines. Both large brains and long intestines demand huge amounts of energy. As a result, it’s difficult to have both.
- The author makes the point that judging the “stone age” humans from their artifacts that still remain would be like future generations judging today’s teenagers only by their snail-mail that could survive the test of time.
- Fishing villages are thought to be the first permanent and stationary human settlements.
- The types of religious beliefs the majority of human beings subscribe to have greatly changed over time.
- Capital flows more easily and abundantly in places where the private property rights are more strongly protected.
- In recent history the cost of war had increased, while the potential rewards have decreased.
- It is not a coincidence that the places where wars are most common are places in which the majority of wealth is held in material goods rather than in knowledge or skill of laborers.