Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Incredible, enagaging breakdown of human history in the tradition of Bill Bryson's “A Brief History of Nearly Everything”. Tribal law, Hammurabis' code–they all buck against modern ideals of right and wrong. The second half of the book really gains momentum with a stark explanation of religion throughout the ages and its part in war, famine, and soarinng empires. Wish there was a little more on the studies of happiness, but was portrayed was a nice take on chemic or biological happiness versus individual happiness. I am putting this one of the list of physical books to own just so I can write all over it!

Effectively a novelization of the video game “Civilization.” Not a criticism.

“Hace 70.000 años, Homo sapiens era todavía un animal insignificante que se ocupaba de sus propias cosas en un rincón de África. En los milenios siguientes se transformó en el amo de todo el planeta y en el terror del ecosistema. Hoy en día está a punto de convertirse en un dios, a punto de adquirir no solo la eterna juventud, sino las capacidades divinas de la creación y la destrucción. [...] ¿Hay algo más peligroso que unos dioses insatisfechos e irresponsables que no saben lo que quieren?”

Provocador. Un libro que TODOS deberían leer, sin excepción. Una breve historia de la humanidad desde los albores de la revolución cognitiva hasta nuestra actual revolución científica. Disfruté de ese humor sarcástico de Harari hacia temas relacionados a ideologías y religiones, invenciones humanas conocidas como “órdenes imaginados” que no tienen nada de divino y que datan desde las épocas de nuestros antepasados cazadores-recolectores. Somos la única especie de nuestro género, los Sapiens, si sobrevivimos a nosotros mismos nos espera un futuro bastante prometedor.

Sigue: Homo Deus

I rate books stricter than most: a good book gets 3 stars, not 5. To get 4, a book has to be written well and to stand out well above average, as I see it. It has to be a book I can see myself reading again, for pleasure or for a deeper understanding. Only a book that significantly affects me – helps me see a major new side of life or a new artistic style – gets 5 stars from me.

“Sapiens” gave me new insights into – or at least new “food for thought” about – the human condition. Presentation of the early “revolutions”, particularly the pessimistic perspective on agriculture, is interesting. I was finding intriguing parallels to Hickel's “The Divide” and Jetha and Ryan's “Sex at Dawn”. The chapters on religions and Capitalism are powerful. Yuval spares no punches, which is much appreciated.

The book is not without flaws – “true,” sometimes it throws a random straw-man out there – but its strengths overcome its shortcomings by a long shot.

4,5 stars

???Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind??? is a simply explained, but somewhat broad history of the human race. In it, you will find possible explanations for our dominance of the globe, anthropology, politics, and many other facets.
It allowed me to realize, that most of the technical and farming advancements we have made have granted us more stability and safety, but may not have made us any happier and likely even brought down our contentedness with life from what it was when were hunter-gatherers.

I would recommend it to anyone who would like to know more about human anthropology, technological advancements, made over the years, and so on.

Una cosa que ocurre mucho con los libros de divulgacion como este es que dependiendo de los conocimientos que tengas hasta ese momento te aporta mas o menos.
A mi, en este caso me a aportado bastante la parte donde explica la pre-historia, pero una vez que nos metemos en historia, no ha aportado datos nuevos.

Es cierto que aporta una vision nueva, mas abstracta. Tambien varias ideas son interesante, como que realmente no sabemos si estamos avanzando o no, es la cultura predominante ahora mismo mejor o peor?
La idea de que ahora mismo pensamos que el futuro siempre sera mejor porque estamos viendo como la tecnologia mejora continuamente pero esto es una vision nueva de las ultimas dos generaciones, no se puede saber si continuaremos asi o no.

Mucho material para pensar.

Gave this four stars because even though I have serious disagreements with the philosophical merits of this book, it's nevertheless interesting and thought-provoking. I would recommend this to some folks with an interest in the topic.

Why did I pick this?
Highly recommended by most of the people who I get my book recommendations from. I'm also interested in Mental Models and recently came across an interesting way of deducing Mental Models by Peter Kaufman, called the three-buckets method. Here you take the three largest sample sized there exist; the organic universe, the biological universe and recorded human history.
Sapiens tells the history of human kind, so I thought it would be a good fit for bucket number three.

The book
The book is divided into four parts; the cognitive revolution (separating Homo Sapiens from other ‘human' species), the agricultural revolution, the unification of humankind (going from very separate societies to a world-spanning species) and the scientific revolution.
In each part Harari describes the factors contributing to the revolution, for example, he argues that money, imperialism and global religions played major factors in the unification of humankind.

My thoughts
Loved the read. Harari has a great way of explaining concepts in layman's terms, making the rather dry subject of Human History very accessible.
This is even more so due to his novel ways of describing certain concepts. This is already the case in the opening pages (from memory); “At first there was the inorganic universe, and we call the field that researches this Physics. Chemical reactions started to take place and we call this field Science. Etc”
I had the feeling that Harari skipped over some statements quite quickly and would need more argumentation. Or state that it was personal opinion.

Recommendations
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the overall history of humankind and especially those who want a general overview (rather than specific events).
As I mentioned in my intro it's also interesting for people looking for Mental Models, although from what I've heard maybe his second book is more interesting (called Homo Deus).

Another book on my want-to-read list that I think would nicely complement this book is The New Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan, which describes the way the Silk Road and global trade has influenced the unification of mankind.

A fascinating read, but I struggled to engage with large sections. I dipped in and out a bit which probably didn't help my cause, but nontheless the sections I DID engage with were incredibly interesting.

[3.75] I'm torn. This book presents some interesting ideas; some I find compelling, some I don't. Harari is definitely a skilled writer, especially for general audiences. That being said he is also no doubt inspired by Jared Diamond, and Diamond is quite the controversial figure in academia. Like Diamond, Harari is (in my opinion) taking one theory and trying to apply it far too broadly. Any living species, especially humans, are far too complicated to be explained by one big idea. It really does feel like he sat in on a colleague's intro to anthropology class and was like “I've got it!”

Everybody has described the book, and probably better than I could. I enjoyed the book, it was engaging, raised some interesting questions, presented some good hypotheses and was at time quite funny. What more do you want me to say?

Amazing book. The author has such a strong understanding of political, religious, social and emotional systems, combining them all to give context on how the world has reached it's current state.

Struggled with interest in part 1, but parts 2 and 3 build up to an incredible part 4 on the scientific revolution with particularly awesome chapters on capitalism, and happiness (separate topics :)).

Enjoyed the very occasional hints of humor, too.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century. It focuses on Homo sapiens. The account is situated within a framework provided by the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary biology.

Harari's work situates its account of human history within a framework provided by the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary biology: he sees biology as setting the limits of possibility for human activity, and sees culture as shaping what happens within those bounds. The academic discipline of history is the account of cultural change.

Harari surveys the history of humankind from the evolution of archaic human species in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. He divides the history of Sapiens into four major parts:

The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).
The unification of humankind (the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
The Scientific Revolution (c. 1500 CE, the emergence of objective science).

Harari's main argument is that Sapiens came to dominate the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. He argues that prehistoric Sapiens were a key cause of the extinction of other human species such as the Neanderthals, along with numerous other megafauna. He further argues that the ability of Sapiens to cooperate in large numbers arises from its unique capacity to believe in things existing purely in the imagination, such as gods, nations, money, and human rights. He argues that these beliefs give rise to discrimination- whether that be racial,sexual or political and it is potentially impossible to have a completely unbiased society. Harari claims that all large-scale human cooperation systems – including religions, political structures, trade networks, and legal institutions – owe their emergence to Sapiens' distinctive cognitive capacity for fiction. Accordingly, Harari regards money as a system of mutual trust and sees political and economic systems as more or less identical with religions.

Harari's key claim regarding the Agricultural Revolution is that while it promoted population growth for Sapiens and co-evolving species like wheat and cows, it made the lives of most individuals (and animals) worse than they had been when Sapiens were mostly hunter-gatherers, since their diet and daily lives became significantly less varied. Humans' violent treatment of other animals is indeed a theme that runs throughout the book.

In discussing the unification of humankind, Harari argues that over its history, the trend for Sapiens has increasingly been towards political and economic interdependence. For centuries, the majority of humans have lived in empires, and capitalist globalization is effectively producing one, global empire. Harari argues that money, empires, and universal religions are the principal drivers of this process.

Harari sees the Scientific Revolution as founded on innovation in European thought, whereby elites became willing to admit to, and hence to try to remedy their ignorance. He sees this as one driver of early modern European imperialism and of the current convergence of human cultures. Harari also emphasises the lack of research into the history of happiness, positing that people today are not significantly happier than in past eras. He concludes by considering how modern technology may soon end the species as we know it, as it ushers in genetic engineering, immortality, and non-organic life. Humans have, in Harari's chosen metaphor, become gods: they can create species.

Unfortunately, this enormous task is the book's own downfall. There is no room for any detailed discussions about these complex issues. And maybe more importantly, no room to discuss evidence. The book is filled with opinions with little to back them up. Such a huge subject deserves more citations. So, not really a book full of factual scientific descriptions, but if you're after an entertaining story give this book a try.

It is a very readable book (and thus many GR critics call it “intelectually watered down” however the points are all well made, easy to follow and, but it might be my current “fuck Homo Sapiens and I am glad we did not have children to inherit the mess we are creating” mood I agreed with most of the assertions. Having also just watched a fascinating BBC documentary on the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest and how, even though they never “joined” the Agricultural Revolution stage they created a culture that was rich in art and other pursuits that we only associate with escaping the hunter-gatherer stage, it further resonated on whether human happiness increase with advanced technology.

This book was really interesting to me, the author uses a lot of stories to show humans through time. The book makes a lot of points that make you think. I preferred the historical portion of the book, the end started to theorize about the future which I did not enjoy as much.

I read this and homo deus in the wrong order but that did not effect the enjoyment of them. Harari's books are well thought out and very satisfying to read.

Mind boggling and life altering. This book has left me heart broken and awestruck. Extremely influential and fast paced. If you do believe/ agree with the author, you shall certainly end up being more skeptical about everything you see and everything you believe in and that may not always be a bad thing...
Absolutely brilliant.

This book is written in a very organized way. The arguments are also very well articulated. It starts from the history of the humankind and hints about what possibilities lie ahead in the near future.

Great way to learn and think about humanity. Past, present and future.

Overall this book is a gripping introductory course to anthropology for the general public.
However, here and there Harari's writing get repetitive and the way he draw philosophical evaluation is lengthily preaching.

In hindsight, this book is so deceivingly simple that you are swept away in its prose - but you later realize that Harari's arguments either do not make sense at all or even if they sometimes do, they are not backed up with data. I'd rather read Piketty or Ferguson, who make for dry reading, but at the very least, they try to back up their opinions with fact.

What if mankind could create robots so advanced, so hypersmart, that not only will they come up with their own wild definitions of intelligence and consciousness, but they actually make us humans end up feeling like we're worthless, meagre animals lacking ownership of all these updated faculties? Just, perhaps, as we view other animals now?

In this future the hierarchy of species has been shifted. Animals have been moved up to reap the benefits of humanism, whilst the humans have obtained god status. But in front of us, having skipped the evolutionary queue, loom these algorithmic entities that have now left us in dust as the Universe's new meaning-makers and trailblazers. They call the new aestheticians, the powerbrokers who define just about everything. Our historical, mythological rise to immortality has resulted in a boring, obsolete godhood.

As another reviewer has pointed out, Homo Deus is not a prophecy but an exploration. It is a cartographic meandering through the various scientific fronts that capture currently our futuristic interest, with some heady-yet-sobering potential apocalypses as their (largely) decorative outcome. It wouldn't really be fair to treat Homo Deus as a rigorous prediction of what our near or distant future will look like, and Harari even says as much. Rather, we're given a list of routes and destinations that our modern sciences can take us to, and the philosophical lemmas that march alongside them. The predictions in this book aren't always sensible, nor do they share a coherent time frame, nor do they really consider their own congruence. But, again, Harari is musing about the future, not prophetically foaming at the mouth, and that makes this book far more useful to us as the humans poised to receive our apotheosis. A rabid techno-Moses preaching the Grey Goo Gospel would have only earned him ridicule (though I guess radical students would love him).

Really interesting and accessible. I feel a much smarter homo sapien for it :)

Not as great as people would have you believe but it is a great overview over human history and present.

I read it almost immediately after Debt: the first 5000 years and it's interesting how two authors take a look at same or similar material and come up with a different conclusions. I prefer the Debt book over this one but both are very well worth a read.

This was, for me, a great introduction to human evolution and history. I see many comments about the accuracy of different parts of this book, and how it's too basic for people who know a lot about this subject. That may be, but for me, it was still a valuable resource for learning things which I perhaps should have already known, and it made boring subjects bearable. I find that to be a major quality, and thus ranks it high.