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SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND

by Yuval Noah Harari

Author biography:

Born to Lebanese parents on 24 February 1976 in Israel, Yuval Noah

Harari is a professor and author who has gained international acclaim
for his best-seller, “Sapiens: a brief history of humankind”. He studied
history at the university of Oxford specialising in the Medieval period
and military strategy. Having gained his doctorate in 2002, he has been
teaching history ever since at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Given his heartfelt concern about animal welfare, he is a committed
vegetarian and lives in a cooperative agricultural community with his
husband near Jerusalem. The author of numerous articles and several books including
"Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity" in 2005, he was awarded the
Polonsky prize for creativity and originality in 2009. His conferences, which he also
streams online, have been a runaway success.

—-

In this summary, you will learn of how Homo Sapiens became the Earth’s only
species of human and how successive revolutions to its way of life have moulded
the modern men and women we are today.

You will also learn that:

- prior to the cognitive revolution, our species was no more than an insignificant
animal;
- it was a long time before Homo Sapiens came to benefit from agriculture;
- the creation of fiction is a fundamental difference between Homo Sapiens and
other animals;
- human cultures are subject to perpetual change;
- Homo Sapiens has put an end to natural selection, replacing it with intelligent
design.

Today, Homo Sapiens possesses the technology and knowledge required to

shape the environment; however, this hasn’t always been the case. 100 millennia
before our era, Homo Sapiens was not the only human species on the planet.
Our species had to go through three revolutions to become what it is today: a
cognitive revolution, an agricultural revolution and a scientific revolution. This
summary will shed light on humankind’s extraordinary saga, as recounted by Yuval
Noah Harari.
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Homo Sapiens has become the only human species thanks to

the ability to generate fiction.
We might think of ourselves as the only human beings to have crossed entire
continents to populate new lands. We often forget about the other human species,
such as the Flores man, the Denisovan or even Neanderthals. Furthermore, the
Homo genus itself makes up part of the great ape species. Why were we, and do
we still remain, able to cross these same continents when other species have died
out?

One hundred millennia before out era, any of us attempting to survive alone
would almost certainly had less success than a chimpanzee in the same situation.
What made Homo Sapiens special was the collective element: we are the only
animal capable of flexible cooperation between a very large number of individuals.
While some insects are capable of working with a great many members of their
species, such as ants, or while others such as great apes can cooperate with a high
level of flexibility, no other species is capable of both at the same time. Ants follow
a strict protocol, written into their DNA, whereas great apes must know a member of
their species closely for cooperation to be possible.

This characteristic, which is specific to the Homo genus, and particularly so

for sapiens, can be explained by the ability to create fictions (make up stories).
Fictions are common nowadays and even exert an influence on objective realities.
States, companies and even money, are little more than the inventions of the
human mind: no other animal would be willing to give up land in exchange for a
piece of paper.

Today, other human species have disappeared, more as a result of inter-

breeding than replacement. There are two theories with regards to the
disappearance of the other human species:

- The first theory, that of inter-breeding, proposes that under certain conditions the
various species were able to mate and therefore replicate their DNA over several
generations, to eventually reach a point where one carried genes passed down
by Neanderthals or the Flores man;
- the second is that of a full-blown genocide and the progressive acquisition of land
by sapiens.

The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between the two theories. These humans,
the dominant species of the Homo genus, but still insignificant on a world scale,
originally lived as hunter-gatherers, and followed a way of life which wasn’t quite as
archaic as you might think.
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The hunter-gatherers of the Afro-Asian continental land mass

lived in clans and had very different ways of life.
Evolution has followed its course right through to the present day; all of our
modern behaviour has been inherited from the sapiens way of life. Our penchant for
sugary and high-calorie products comes from the difficulty to find sugary food and
sufficient nourishment at that time. Such a shortage drove hunter-gatherers to
gorge themselves and consume as many calories as possible when they came
across fruit trees, meaning that they wouldn’t leave any to other animals.

Despite archaeological research, it is difficult to gain an exact idea of the

hunter-gatherer life as, in contrast to post-agricultural sapiens, they possessed few
items. At that time, the naturally nomadic hunter-gatherers could not afford to
burden themselves with excessive amounts of objects.

By the same token, painting a portrait of the Homo sapiens is not all that
straightforward either, as one of its key characteristics is precisely the diversity of
ways of life and languages which would change from one tribe to the next,
according to beliefs, which were dictated by environments and individual
imagination.

It is possible, however, to determine a way of life shared by all clans: they

would live in groups of dozens of individuals and had a domesticated animal, the
dog, which had been Man’s companion for millennia before farm animals. As for
their beliefs, they were probably animists, meaning that in their eyes all parts of
nature and everything which surrounded them, from the oak under which they slept
to the river flowing over the land, had a soul of equal value to that of man. The
members of these clans were very close and would interact with the People of other
clans to barter or exchange information. It also goes without saying that relations
between clans were not always warm and war was then a fact of life. For this
reason, 5% of deaths were caused by conflict, a significantly higher proportion than
the current world average, inclusive of crime.

A revolution then occurred and radically changed the way groups lived. Was
it for the better? Not necessarily.

The agricultural revolution did not entirely improve the life of

the Homo sapiens.
Like all the species of the human genus, Homo sapiens lived on a diet of
plants and animals and had a largely unplanned, opportunistic existence. They
never knew in advance which animal would be hunted or what fruit would be
gathered. All that changed radically with the agricultural revolution, ten millennia
before our
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era. The domestication of animals, the planting of fruit and vegetables, were
intended to secure more resources for farmers. They started with wheat and goats
and, over the millennia, moved on to lentils and horses.

Unfortunately for these new farmers, the revolution triggered a larger famine.
In fact, crop cultivation, particularly that of wheat, tends to spread, even to places
where the person does not wish to grow it. However, in the instance a crop failure
brought about by an unexpected event, Humans would find themselves facing
certain disaster resulting in the death of several group members. There is a much
lower level of dependence on specific types of food among hunter-gatherers who,
when faced with such situations, simply concentrate on other areas or consume
other types of food.

Nevertheless, the deaths of early farmers are sometimes attributed to food

shortages. When a group of farmers was threatened by another, conflict and the
demise of one of the two groups was the only outcome. In fact, in certain areas of
the world, more than a quarter of people were murdered, which represents an
incredibly high level of violence, even when compared with the levels which existed
within hunter-gatherer communities.

Nevertheless, this violence seems to have been the price which had to be
paid for access to the luxury of the farming life, and particular the greater access to
food. This at least was the hope of the Homo sapiens, which was dashed by a
calculated error regarding offspring: for hunter-gatherers, having children brought
with it the increased efforts needed to feed and transport them. Sedentary farming
clans, not having to make special efforts, had more children, which meant more
mouths to feed and therefore undermined the benefits of agriculture.
It would take mankind many centuries to finally gain any advantage from this new
way of life and for their bodies to adapt to it.

Our species was not biologically prepared for the post-

agricultural world.
A culture or a way of life can change relatively quickly and the agricultural
revolution is an example of a brutally abrupt change to the life of a species. DNA is
very slow to evolve, as is the human body. What’s more, Humankind needed time
to adapt to this new reality. To begin with, the skeleton in particular underwent
substantial readjustments, some of which are still ongoing today, to a lesser extent.
With the agricultural revolution, the skeleton and muscles, formerly used to hunt,
run and climb, were then required to bend over, kneel or stay in the same place. As
a result, joints were weakened. Analyses performed on these skeletons reveal a
significant increase in arthritis and hernias following this revolution.
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The skeleton was not alone in struggling to adapt to the changes brought
about by agriculture: memory was also insufficient. Essentially, population
increases and the arrival of increasingly complex political systems led to an
explosion in the demands placed on the memory, the limits of which were quickly
reached by all this information. This inability had three causes:

- the limits of the brain itself, as it had never possible for it to store the entirety of
the rules laid down by a society (for instance);
- the transfer of information, which is particularly delicate: transmitting an idea to
another Human who will in turn pass it on to another, leads to the alteration of
information;
- while the information contained in DNA can be analysed in large quantities, it has
become more difficult to understand with the advent of numerical data, which
appeared after the agricultural revolution, following increased population
numbers and production requiring the wider use of mathematical thinking.

Fortunately, this last revolution is in part responsible for a third revolution: the
scientific revolution.

The ways of life led by Homo sapiens gradually converged.

There are of course diverse and varied cultures all over the Earth, but all
unquestionably have certain fictions in common, which play their role in the
unification of humanity. There are three pillars on which humankind’s global society
now rests: money, empire and religion.

Hunter-gatherers did not use money; their small community life of close
relatives required very little in the way of exchange, which for the large part
employed a barter system. However, with the passing of millennia, the evolution of
the population, the expansion of inhabited territory and the increase to the variety of
products (whether they were comestible or not) barter on this much larger scale
became impossible.

The difficulty with barter systems lies in setting the rate; the price of each
product has to be set relative to every other one, so in other words, one must
decide in each case how many berries could be exchanged for a ladder or how
many ladders for fifty kilos of clay or how many kilos of clay for fabric. For 100
products, you would need to know 4950 exchange rates, all adjusted depending on
the harvest and the particulars of the product, and of course not all ladders are
quite the same. This is what eventually led to the spread of money among
Humankind.
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This development is partly due to the new type of political system which was
gaining ground: empire.

Empire dominates a set of different cultures grouped under an imperial

banner. Not only did the number of these empires experience exponential growth
over the centuries, but their size also increased considerably. For trade to exist
between such sizeable political structures, a barter system would have been
practically impossible. Above and beyond the issue of money, empires contributed
directly to unification by creating imperial cultures. The Amerindians therefore had
no particular cultural link with England before that country invaded North America.
The same was true for the conquistadors and South America.

Last of all, religion represented the final pillar of unification. In holy lands, it
was neither belonging to the same empire, nor trade links which brought people
from different parts of the globe together, but instead a shared belief in the same
religion.

Following the unification of Humankind, a further revolution would shape the

People we see all around us today.

The scientific revolution started once Homo Sapiens became

aware of the value of knowledge

The last five centuries have given rise to an unprecedented technological

boom. The population has multiplied fourteenfold, production and productivity have
exploded, travel time has been reduced by a factor of 10 or more. Current
technology enables quasi-instantaneous communication between two different
points on the planet, land, sea and air travel, precise knowledge of the location of
an individual carrying a minuscule microchip as well as the construction of buildings
measuring hundreds of metres in height built of glass and steel. Humankind now
possesses in-depth knowledge of its environment, and even of what is invisible to
the naked eye, such as viruses, bacteria or ultraviolet rays. This knowledge is
stored in our brains, in books whose numbers simply cannot be compared with
those of 500 years ago, or even in machines, just one of which would be able to
store the entirety of the works produced by the human mind since the scientific
revolution.

A virtuous circle has enabled such advances. Five centuries ago,

Humankind realised that the more effort was invested in scientific research, the
more power could be obtained and with that the resources required to continue the
research efforts.

Three changes in scientific thinking were responsible for this shift:

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- the simple starting point of becoming aware of our own ignorance;

- the ability to resolve this through observations and experience;
- the idea of using research to heighten one’s power.

The scientific revolution could therefore be described as a revolution regarding the

place of ignorance in scientific thinking and the method required to address it.

Just like the agricultural revolution, the scientific revolution developed gradually and
rested on various pillars.

The modern world has been shaped by the scientific revolution

Here again, the notion of empire plays a fundamental role. It was in Europe
that modern science was born and the largest modern empires appeared. Since the
15th Century the European conquest has blended the appropriation of territory and
the search for knowledge. This is what led Darwin to set sail on board the HMS
Beagle in the direction of South America to study geological formations. Nowadays,
there are numerous companies hoping to monopolise the resources to be found in
space, and this surge accurately reflects the European ambition to travel the
unexplored regions of the world before it was too late in order to satisfy their
curiosity.

Money also played its part in this revolution, by essentially exploiting the
Planet through a system which has now - ironically - created a situation of quasi-
monopoly: capitalism. Capitalism starts from the principle that a project must allow
for an economic profit to be gained. With profit being the end goal, improvements to
productivity and progress in technical and technological skills have naturally driven
humanity towards science and scientific progress.

Lastly, the third pillar this time has nothing to do with religion as it is a
question of industrialisation and the exhaustion of resources. Will the exhaustion of
resources give rise to scientific progress? Yes. In reality, it is very often the very
lack of resources or energy which has created the need to invent new forms of
exploiting these resources, or to find others capable of fulfilling the same needs.
Today, as oil is in the midst of disappearing, science is seeking a way of replacing
this energy with more urgency than ever before, in order to cater for the needs of
transport and manufacturing, which rely on this raw material.

However, are the workings of industry grinding to a halt? The capitalist

system has now become highly competitive, and everyday shortages of numerous
food products becomes a little more evident, How will all of this turn out?
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The future of humanity could involve surpassing the human

body’s biological limits
Now that we know how History began, how could it end? What at least will be
the next chapter in our story?

There is no shortage of indications:

- the revolution will continue on its current course, but that does not mean that we
will run out of resources. Humankind could trigger a mass extinction capable of
bringing about our own destruction as it would only take one misstep to bring
about the sixth mass extinction.
- the search for happiness will take on ever greater importance, as is already the
case today - data is used to measure the happiness of a country’s inhabitants.
Again, must it be possible to measure happiness and understand if this is really a
goal in and of itself;
- surpassing the biological limits of Homo sapiens. In becoming able to transform
nature, to shape it - from artificial organs to machines designed to control our
climate - Humankind has now gone beyond mere human status. Will bionic eyes
soon be human eyes? Have humans become the God which we once revered?

Conclusion
Humankind is able to control nature to a certain extent, but since the dawn of
our reign of this world, its plants and animals, what have we really contributed? The
human species produces and creates more, collectively speaking, but on an
individual level, nothing has really changed. Ultimately, Homo sapiens is a truly
social animal. The damage caused by Humankind will soon be a thing of the past,
as newfound scientific abilities will enable us to control our emotions and
conscience in the future.

The take-home message of this summary:

- Homo sapiens has become the only human species thanks to the ability to
generate fiction;
- the hunter-gatherers of the Afro-Asian continental land mass lived in clans and
had very different ways of life;
- the agricultural revolution did not entirely improve the life of Homo sapiens;
- our species was not biologically prepared for the post-agricultural world;
- the ways of life led by Homo sapiens gradually converged;
- the scientific revolution started once Homo Sapiens became aware of the value
of knowledge;
- the modern world has been shaped by the scientific revolution;
- the future of humanity could involve surpassing the human body’s biological
limits.