Reflection on Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

               Now here’s a cool book. It’s all about the evolution and development of humankind over the years and how we transformed not just biologically, but how we transformed into the social, political and economic creatures we are today, while, in turn, transforming the world around us to be as we would prefer it. He has a really great writing style and a knack for getting to the heart of complicated issues.

               Some interesting dates in the spread of humanity outside Africa are the time when Homo Sapiens left Africa for the first time, 70,000 years ago; when Sapiens reached Europe and East Asia 45,000 years ago; the period from 70-30,000 years ago when Sapiens invented boats, lamps, bows and arrows, and needles. That period, from 70-30,000 years ago is considered a cognitive revolution in the history of humanity. From this point on, human societies started to fracture apart, creating different cultures in far-flung regions of the world, and getting cut off from each other by long distances and difficult terrain. Shortly thereafter, about 15,000 years ago, humans independently began to domesticate animals, starting with the dog and being followed by horses, wheat, pigs, chickens, and many other animals and plants. In these early years of the spread of Sapiens, many animal species went extinct, especially the largest that needed more space and had no natural predators before Sapiens. Of the 24 Australian animals that weighed 50 kg or more, 23 went extinct. Humans crossed the Bering Strait into the Americas in 12,000 BCE and arrived at the southern tip of South America in 10,000 BCE. 2,000 years is a very, very quick time considering it took 25,000 to reach from Africa to Europe and East Asia.

               The second section of the book covers the Agricultural Revolution, the author pointing out that 90% of all the calories that feed humanity come from plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BCE. Harari calls the Agricultural Revolution “history’s greatest fraud,” because, while our lives certainly benefit for it, it was definitely worse for the early agriculturalists than nomadism had been. People fed porridge developed weaker immune systems and dependence on a single source of food made risk of drought much more severe. Even in good years, a granary would attract thieves, forcing people to defend their surpluses. With more children, producing more food didn’t really help people that much, as there were then even more mouths to feed, so people became less well-nourished. All this agriculture only happened on a small amount of Earth’s territory. Only 2% of the Earth’s land surface was being used for agriculture by 1400 CE. The agricultural revolution ended in a system where men controlled women and men were in turn controlled by more influential men. The author asks us, as if it is ironic, “How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individuals who are supposedly less cooperative (men) control individuals who are supposedly more cooperative (women)?” I would say that a female tendency to cooperate is exactly why this is happening. If the people you wish to subjugate do not cooperate well, they will be unruly and difficult to manage; if they do cooperate, things will go much more smoothly for you.

               The next section talks about the three forces that united people after the Agricultural Revolution, which are money, empire, and religion. One combination of empire and religion mentioned is the Mandate of Heaven, which I learned to see in a new light. I had always thought the Mandate of Heaven was a sort of obvious thing where of course the person who wins the war will claim to be “ordained by God” or whatever. However, I realized that’s not the significance. The significance is that to gain the Mandate of Heaven, you have to take over ALL of China! You can’t split China up! That’s a really important cultural and historical belief. So long as you believe that the region cannot be split, people will try to rule the entire thing, without secession. That is responsible in a big way for the existence of a modern Chinese supermassive state that is considered to be ethnically homogeneous. Since no two rulers could hold the Mandate simultaneously, claimants to the throne were forced to conquer all of China, uniting it until the modern era.  

               Later in the book, Harari discusses the cause of the takeover of the world by Europe, which for so long had been a backwater. It comes down to, for him, science and capitalism. He writes, “The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.” That is critical in allowing European takeover. Europeans were the first to realize that just like slaves, gold, or later oil, knowledge is a resource. Knowledge is actually probably more powerful than all three of those combined.

               One criticism I have of Harari is how clearly sheltered and neoliberally European he is. He seems to really not consider that anyone outside of the educated classes of the rich countries will be reading. For example, he writes, “No one speaks about exterminating lower races or inferior people, but many contemplate using our increasing knowledge of human biology to create superhumans.” What? Are you kidding me? Lots of people definitely talk about that stuff and take action on it. They are members of the KKK, Hamas, and tons of other evil groups that still definitely exist. However, Harari also points out that myths of racial superiority are complete nonsense. For example, Africans brought as slaves to the Americas were not brought because they were inferior. On the contrary, they were brought to the Americas because they had immunities to tropical diseases, making them genetically superior to their European masters. He’s correct, but it feels like he’s not living in the real world when he just acts as if people don’t still want to exterminate one another.

               Toward the end, Harari discusses happiness, and our difficulties in achieving it. I wrote this, which kind of sums up what he talked about:

How many people do you know who are as happy as the level you want to achieve in your own life? Do you know 25 people who are at that level of happiness? 10? 3? Even 1? I often find myself trying to improve my own life so that I can be happier. I want to work out so that I can be stronger and have a better-looking body. I want to have a good job and win the acclaim of my peers. I want to eat the best food and try all the best things before I die, visiting the most interesting places in the world too, because why not? Romantic consumerism tells me that I absolutely should do all those things, but who is programming the agenda of romantic consumerism? Can any of these things keep me at a high-level of happiness? Nobody I know is happy all the time, yet we’re constantly trying to get happier and do things that make us happy. This is definitely achievable in the short-term. If I buy a new shirt that I look good in, I’m definitely happy the first few times I wear it. But how happy am I by the 15^th time? I’m basically back to the normal level where I was at before the shirt.

               What would happen if everybody decided to stop trying to be so happy? The Buddha says that desire or craving is the route of all suffering and that’s a thought that’s gotten even more relevant with time. So who is programming the romantic consumerism that tells me that I need to be happier? It’s advertisements and mass media that show me people who are more beautiful than me, richer than me, smarter than me, and have more friends than me. Am I supposed to be able to achieve all these things? No. I can never become the most beautiful, richest, smartest, and friendliest person in the world. Even if I could miraculously achieve one of those things, I would certainly not achieve them all in one short lifetime. Instead, so long a I keep wanting to be very happy in the long-term, I will almost certainly be unhappy.

               This is because long-term happiness doesn’t function like the short-term. While buying a shirt provides short-term happiness, long-term happiness is really something different. It’s more like satisfaction- not the burst of joy that comes from a positive life event but the steady satisfaction that comes from living a life at or above my expectations. If I set my expectations too high, I will be guaranteed to live a life relentlessly pursuing an emotional state that, due to the very fact that I pursue it so much, is impossible to achieve. But how do I set my expectations to a point that is low and reasonable enough to allow me long-term satisfaction while high enough to keep me moving along in life and improving myself and the lives of others?

Conclusion

While flawed, this is a really good book to read for anyone interested in a vast array of subjects from biology to history to psychology to economics. It covers the most important issues that address humanity and at the end moves to our future challenges that will face us. At one point he writes, “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.”

Miscellaneous Facts:

• More Christians were killed at the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 23^rd, 1572 than in the entire history of the Roman Empire.
• Britain’s disastrous economic policy in India caused the Great Bengal Famine between 1769 and 1773, killing 10 million Bengalis, a third of the province’s population.