Sapiens

Title: Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2014 (First published 2011)

ISBN: 9780099590088

Pages: 498

Yuval Noah Harari’s ‘Sapiens’ was a book I had long wanted to read. The volume was always under reservation and its popularity was comparable to Dan Brown’s hotcakes in fiction. The book tells the story of the human race from the past, through the present and into the probable roads ahead which lead to the future. Its title is obviously derived from the biological name of our species – Homo sapiens. When the first letter changes to uppercase in the author’s narrative, it changes in scope from a single individual, a tribe of people, a nation of citizens or the sea of humanity. Harari structures this book around three major shifts in human life – the cognitive revolution that kick started history around seventy thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution that sped it up about twelve thousand years ago and the scientific revolution which began five hundred years ago but has the potential to end history and start something completely different. The narrative is an absorbing blend of sharp analyses and captivating examples of how the three revolutions had affected humans and their fellow organisms. Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian who teaches at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This book came out when he was only thirty-four.

Any analysis on the development of humans must necessarily take into consideration the important factor that enabled them to leave the domain of animals in thought and culture. This was what catapulted the ape that dwelled in desolate savannahs to skyscrapers literally in the blink of the evolutionary eye. This is called the cognitive revolution, a term coined by Harari, which appeared as new ways of thinking and communicating between 70,000 and 35,000 years ago. We are still unclear what made us different. Lack of clarity in scientific reasoning is fertile ground for religion to propose their outlandish theories that make a mockery of common sense. It may probably help them not to hark too keen on the concept of creation that happened a few millennia ago and to ascribe the development of superior cognitive facility to divine intervention. Science guesses that accidental genetic mutations might have changed the inner wiring of the ape brain, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language.

Harari firmly drives down the concept of cognitive revolution in some detail. Taken individually, a man (and that includes woman too) is no match for other animals. A cheetah can outpace him in seconds, an elephant would make him mincemeat in no time and his ability to swim in water is somewhat labored. He compensates for all these deficiencies in having excellent software in his brain. But what use is software, if it can’t be translated into mechanical action through appropriate hardware? Man compensated for this shortcoming by learning to cooperate in large numbers. This came about through language that could transmit information about things that do not exist at all, such as legends, myths, gods, limited-liability companies and nation states. This was pure fiction, but the newly moulded human societies embraced these imagined realities with gusto. Fiction enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. Such myths facilitated the Sapiens with the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers. The immense diversity of imagined realities that Sapiens invented and the resulting variety of behaviour patterns are the main components of what we call ‘culture’. Physiologically, there has been no significant improvement in our tool-making ability, but we progressed from sticks with flint spearheads to intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.

The next revolution Harari postulates was in agriculture that was not as fundamental as the cognitive, but nevertheless completely transformed human organizational capabilities and upgraded his skills to form viable groups in mindboggling numbers. The transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturist took place around 9500 – 8500 BCE in the hill country of southeastern Turkey, western Iran and the Levant. Within a few thousands of years, the conquest of man over plants was complete. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2000 years. However, agriculture didn’t metamorphose human societies to prosperity overnight. In fact, the agricultural revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. It only enlarged the sum total of food, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. The author even accuses it as history’s ‘biggest fraud’.

This book provides great views of the historical and geographical landscape through which humanity travelled over time. It is with the scientific revolution that Sapiens took a break with the past and reached levels of prosperity undreamt of at any time in history. Even the wildest imaginations of medieval thinkers can comprehend the level of comfort, health and general well-being of even ordinary modern people. It admitted for the first time the limits of our knowledge. Having realized the quantum of ignorance, the age of exploration and learning began. Earlier, humanity thought that the religious texts contained all the answers and the society had somehow degenerated from a golden past to the present state. Scientific revolution put its trust in the future by emphasizing human endeavour in pursuit of knowledge. This led to progress on all fronts. The development of the idea of ‘credit’ in financial transactions is an offshoot of the hope newly put on a better future. This contrasted with the age-old practice of looking at the future with trepidation. The change in financial wisdom from high-interest, short-term, low-value loans to low-interest, long-term, high-value deals revolutionized the way business was done at the major centres of Western culture and from there to the rest of the world under the sword of Imperialism.

Imperialism is thought to be an era that caused insufferable distress and agony for the subject peoples of Africa and Asia while their colonial masters in Europe unabashedly reaped the benefits. On the top of slavery, the brutal repression of the supposedly free people in the empire’s plantations was bloodcurdlingly cruel, such as the severing of workers’ limbs for failing to meet production quotas. In India, devastating famines ravaged the countryside while the occupying British diverted money and grain to their coffers in London as dividend on profits. Harari brings out some of the brighter aspects of colonial rule. He does it cautiously while acknowledging the overall stain on its body politic. Imperialism nursed the scientific revolution from its cradle to maturity. Science needed a lot of data from all parts of the world on botany, geography, zoology, mineralogy and climate. This need was fulfilled by hitchhiking on the Imperialist infrastructure. Scientists were ‘embedded’ in Imperial garrisons on their voyages of exploration and conquest. Scholars studied the social customs, language, history and archeology of the natives. A great void in Indian history of the pre-Islamic period was filled in by the untiring efforts of British historians and archeologists. Taking a balanced view of the complete picture, the author suggests that Imperialism changed the world to such an extent that they cannot be labeled good or bad; it created the world as we know it, including the ideologies we use to judge them.

Harari’s praise for polytheism in general and for the breakthroughs achieved by Buddhism in removing suffering from the devotee’s mind is sure to rankle narrow-minded believers of monotheistic religions. This is especially noteworthy as the book originated in Israel, where the world’s very first durable monotheist religion originated in the first millennium BCE. Polytheism is claimed to be inherently tolerant as its pantheon can be easily tweaked to include the gods of its rival sects without upsetting the raison d’etre. It is true that the Roman polytheists persecuted Christians, but this was due to the abuse and disrespect the Christians heaped on Roman gods while comparing them to the Christian divine figure. Monotheism was far more fanatical and missionary in nature. They introduced an omnipotent god possessing interests and biases in his dealings with mankind. Besides, most monotheist religions’ claim to adoration of a supreme deity is respected more in preaching than in practice. The ubiquity of angelic demigods and pantheon of saints is a fallback to an earlier era. Every Christian kingdom, town and city had its own patron saint in the fashion of tutelary divinities. Sometimes, pre-existing gods were absorbed into Christian lore. Brigid was the Celtic goddess of Ireland. When the country changed its faith to Christianity, the goddess was renamed Brigit and elevated as the most revered saint of Ireland. In short, this book establishes that monotheism as it stands now is a kaleidoscope of monotheist, polytheist and animistic beliefs.

The book ends with several chapters reserved to take a peek into the future of humanity. This is, quite expectedly, a huge anthology of intelligent guesswork. Much of it is further elaborated in the same author’s Homo Deus, the sequel to this book. Sapiens originally came out in Hebrew and was translated by the author three years later with some professional help. However, the structure and diction of the work make it difficult to imagine the book in any other language than English. Harari has collected a lot of ideas along with interesting anecdotes which make it so endearing to the readers. It is a great collection of ideas, though most of them are not original. The research is definitely wide, but too shallow as to preclude a bibliography in the book. Harari has stayed intact to the periphery of facts and information, but presents them in a rational and appealing way. The book is a treasure that every reader must cherish. I was after this book for many months now, since it was always under reservation in both the libraries I had had a membership. Now that I had completed the book, I have a feeling that it is somewhat overrated by popular frenzy.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Midnight in Chernobyl

Title: Midnight in Chernobyl – The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster

Author: Adam Higginbotham

Publisher: Bantam, 2019 (First)

ISBN: 9780593076842

Pages: 538

In its bid to build up an industrial infrastructure rivalling the West, the erstwhile Soviet Union turned to nuclear power in a big way. A lot of nuclear reactors that generated electric power came up in many parts of the sprawling nation. Chernobyl in Ukraine was one such unit housing four reactors using the Russian-developed RBMK technology, each generating 1000 megawatt of electricity. Construction of two new reactors was progressing at a furious pace in 1986. On the night of April 26 of that year, a terrible explosion occurred in Unit Four that transformed the destiny of the nuclear power industry and accelerated – to a considerable extent – the downfall of communism in the world. At the time of the mishap, the V I Lenin nuclear power station at Chernobyl was the world's largest nuclear power complex. The explosion caused the release of tons of deadly radioactive material into the atmosphere which landed back on ground as dust and rain. The entire Europe was also affected by the nuclear fallout. The authorities had to evacuate the whole population from a zone running thirty kilometres in all directions of the plant. Chernobyl accident was caused by careless planning, sloppy operation, and serious design problems pushed under the carpet. This book tells the story of the incident in panoramic detail. Adam Higginbotham is a journalist who has written for major American newspapers and lives in New York City.

This book presents a critical analysis of the Soviet nuclear program and its unwonted emphasis on secrecy. Accidents were not reported to the international watchdog IAEA. For almost thirty years, both the Soviet public and the world at large were encouraged to believe that the USSR operated the safest nuclear industry in the world. The Communist party controlled all aspects of life in the country and meddled with nuclear technology as well. Nuclear engineers had to study political indoctrination as part of curricula such as the history of the party in the Soviet Union and the social laws established by Marx and developed by Lenin and Brezhnev. Position in the party influenced recruitment such as a person's posting in a plum job. Nikolai Fomin, the operations chief of the Chernobyl plant had risen through party circles and had learnt nuclear physics by a correspondence course!

After outlining the political structure that led to the disaster, the author brings out the design flaws that invited catastrophe. The reactor was huge – as befits the description of any product built inside the iron curtain – having a size twenty times that of Western reactors. Contrary to practice, it had no containment building, the thick concrete dome built around every reactor. Because the RBMK reactor was so immense, building the containment structure would have doubled the cost. The reactor was also riddled with a serious problem called the Positive Void Coefficient. When steam bubbles through water, the displacement of the liquid by the vapour phase reduced its moderating property to control the nuclear reaction. This caused a positive feedback mechanism that undermined reactor stability. The positive void coefficient resulted in runaway chain reactions in the event of a loss of coolant. This was a bane of the RBMK technology. It grew worse as more of the fuel was burnt. The longer it was in operation, the harder the reactor became to control. At the end of the three-year operating cycle, the reactor would be at its most unpredictable.

The extraordinarily large size of the reactor only added to the woes of the operators. Due to the huge size, reaction was often confined to narrow regions. The instrumentation was antiquated and when the control rods were inserted, reaction shot up initially before gradually coming down – another design fault. In addition to the growing list of troubles, the emergency protective system took eighteen seconds to fully insert the control rods to the core to shut down the reactor. In the frenzy to line up the unit at the earliest, several critical tests were postponed during the commissioning stage. The accident occurred when the management had decided to do a rundown test that was long overdue. This test helps to ensure supply of cooling water to the reactor in case of a total blackout. The unit was to be taken out for maintenance after running continuously for three years since its installation. The test and eventual stoppage of the reactor was scheduled during daytime, but the Kiev grid operator refused permission and suggested to stop it after the peak load hours. This pushed the test to begin at around 1:00 am.

An accident is an accident which can happen anywhere and anytime, irrespective of whether the state is socialist or capitalist. What is shocking is the communist state’s obsession with secrecy and cover-up. Every accident that occurred at a nuclear station in the Soviet Union continued to be regarded as a state secret, kept even from the specialists at the installation where they occurred. Even when Chernobyl was making headline news in international media, Soviet citizens were still not informed about the true scale of the disaster and its possible impact on environment and public health. Party-run newspapers relegated highly censored reports to the inner pages, under sports results. Europe took precautions when radioactivity was first detected in Sweden and people made a beeline to drug stores for potassium iodide tablets to keep away harmful effects of radiation. Lack of information bred panic in the West and distrust of the administration in the USSR. In a socialist polity, all parts of the country are supposed to be equal, but the regions where top party leaders reside were more equal than the others. When the wind turned towards Moscow, threatening it with radioactive dust clouds from Chernobyl, Soviet aircrafts flew repeated missions to seed the clouds with silver iodide and forced rain on the countryside. The capital was spared, but hundreds of square kilometres of fertile farmland in Belarus were lashed with black rain containing radioactive graphite particles, rendering the produce unfit for consumption.

However hard you may accuse the socialist system of incompetence and secrecy, once it was awakened out of slumber, the beast did a thorough job of containment and evacuation humanly possible. The author hands out some glowing commendations to the selfless workers who risked their lives to work on the damaged reactor. All souls, except the working crew, were evacuated permanently from a thirty-kilometre zone and all children in Kiev for a few days. Many settlements were decontaminated many times, but homes that resisted the process were simply demolished. Eventually, whole villages were bulldozed flat and buried. Even the leaves on the trees and the earth beneath the feet had become sources of ionizing radiation. The bill for the mitigation measures was a staggering $128 billion. That was equal to the total Soviet defence budget for 1989. This came on the heels of an oil price crash, when oil was a prime source of revenue to the Soviets.

Higginbotham’s focus is on radiation, but he positions a convenient mirror on the life of ordinary people under the Communist party’s dictatorship. USSR had enforced an internal passport system that prevented most citizens from leaving their areas of registration without good reason and concurrence from the authorities. Radio speaker boxes were hardwired in every apartment, piping in propaganda, just like gas and electricity, over three channels – union, republic and city. Even switching it off was regarded with suspicion. The book also talks about the beginning of the end of communism. With Gorbachev's glasnost, the party released its grip on information with more open reporting from Chernobyl. Slowly at first, but then with gathering momentum, the Soviet republic began to discover how deeply it had been misled about the accident and ideology and identity upon which their society was founded. The accident and the government’s inability to protect its population finally shattered the illusion that the USSR was a global superpower armed with technology that led the world. As the state’s attempts to conceal the truth came to light, even the most faithful citizens of the Soviet Union faced the realisation that their leaders were corrupt and that the Communist dream was a sham.

The heroic efforts of the team called ‘liquidators’ to seal off the damaged reactor are thrilling and extol the glory of Soviet dedication. Just five months after the collapse, Unit One reactor came back online and the three remaining reactors eventually continued to pour electricity to the Ukrainian grid till the year 2000. Higginbotham has made several visits to the affected areas as part of his research for this book. This helps him to lay before us a comprehensive picture of things. By 2005, 4700 sq. km of north western Ukraine and southern Belarus was still declared uninhabitable by radiation. Even after three decades, half of the wild boar shot by hunters in the forests of the Czech Republic was still too radioactive for human consumption. However, things are not all bleak. In the exclusion zone, ecological rebirth and renewal is now taking place. Groups of animals are thriving there as if humans are a more serious threat than radiation. Even people are surreptitiously settling inside the exclusion zone. The public health effects, as a whole, were not really as substantial as had at first been feared.

The book is absorbing and pleasing to read. The epilogue summarises the later lives of all major characters in the drama that unfolded on that deadly April night in 1986. A neat glossary and a description of radiation-related terms add to the appeal. That can't be said about the many photographic plates included in it. The monochrome images are more of people than of events and vistas related in the text.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Heroines

Title: Heroines – Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History

Author: Ira Mukhoty

Publisher: Aleph Book Company, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9789384067496

Pages: 211

Women have historically been relegated to a subsidiary role in historical narrative where kings and nobles followed a one-to-many relationship with the females in their harems until quite recent times. This naturally reduced the power and influence of women as they had had to compete with other wives, mistresses and slaves for the lord's attention. There are noble exceptions to this general rule and this book details the lives of eight women from India's past who had won for themselves the aura of immortality on account of their steadfast determination and strength of character. The eight women chosen are: Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Razia bint-Iltutmish, Mirabai, Jahanara Begum, Rani Lakshmibai and Begum Hazrat Mahal. The author has an excellent answer to those who frown on the inclusion of two mythic characters in the list – Draupadi and Radha. This is because history blends into mythology and vice versa in the Indian context. The history of Rani Lakshmibai is embellished with colourful lore to make her a semi-divine personage no longer bound by the physical limitations inherent in mortal beings. Making the horse jump with her adopted son tied to her back from the ramparts of Jhansi fort to the ground below is one such example. The logic in selecting them is clear cut – all women share an unassailable belief in a cause for which they are willing to fight and they refused to borrow a man's prerogative – whether a father's, husband’s or son’s. Mukhoty is a popular writer who had developed an interest in the evolution of mythology and history and its relevance to the status of women in India. She has written for magazines on culture and travel.

This book’s evaluation of Rani Lakshmibai is patently unfair and merciless. The author assigns the dubious epithets of an ‘accidental heroine’ and ‘reluctant participant in the drama that made her a heroine’ (p.146). Mukhoty explains the reasons for this strange judgement of a nationally loved historical personality. She points out the ‘Doctrine of Lapse’ put in place by Lord Dalhousie as soon as he became the Governor General of India. This policy sought to remove all travesty of self-governance of princely states whose ruler died without a legal heir to succeed him. In the case of hereditary ancestral kingdoms, adoption of an heir was permitted. As far as Jhansi was concerned, the deposed Peshwa of Pune conceded all his territorial claims in Bundelkhand to the British in 1817. The ruling Navalkar family signed a separate treaty with the East India Company, who recognised Ram Chand Rao as its ruler. Gangadhar Rao, Lakshmibai's husband, followed him to the throne. He was a transvestite and no children were born to him. He adopted the five-year old Damodar Rao on his death bed. So, on a close examination of the finer nuances of law, it may be argued that the British were right in denying the continued enjoyment of the throne to the adopted son, which is exactly the attitude the author assumes.

The author’s attacks on the Rani of Jhansi don't stop there. She concedes the Rani’s bold decision of not shaving her head and declining renouncement of her pearls and diamonds on the death of her husband. She sometimes dressed like a man, argued with men, rode horses and wielded the sword. This was revolutionary for the time and quiet unthinkable activities for a woman. Rani Lakshmibai explored all avenues open to her as part of the British judicial system to argue her case and win the control of her principality. For this purpose, she hired the services of a maverick lawyer named John Lang. The reception accorded to Lang is given in great detail in the book which is however clearly intended only to tarnish the queen’s repute in nationalist chronicles. Mukhoty claims that Lang was brought from Agra in a horse-drawn carriage accompanied by the Diwan of Jhansi and a butler carried a bucket of ice containing water, beer and wine all the way. A servant stood outside the palanquin on a footboard and fanned the men with a punkha. The constant appeals and entreaties made by Lakshmibai to the British are also projected in an unfavourable light. As a parting shot, the author claims that she had no option but to fight the British after the massacre of innocent men, women and children of British origin at Jokhun Bagh under her watch. No clemency could be expected from the Europeans for such a heinous deed.

Mukhoty’s criticism of Rani Lakshmibai is propelled by the high renown she enjoys in nationalist circles. While she knocks about the Rani unceremoniously, her encounter with Begum Hazrat Mahal is with kid gloves. The Begum of Lucknow is, no doubt, a great leader of the 1857 war of independence, but the author’s arguments against the Rani are equally applicable against the Begum too. She had even threatened her soldiers that if they don't fight enough, she will negotiate with the British to spare her life (p.162). The Rani fought the British and fell in the battlefield while the Begum fled to Nepal on a tacit agreement with the British. She tried to come back later in life, but her appeals were rejected. One crucial point to be noted here is that this comparison is in no way meant to degrade the role of Begum Hazrat Mahal. On the contrary, it is included to highlight the similarities in the parts played by these two brave women for the country. It is the author who picks one among the great stalwarts of the Independence movement for making a disreputable attack.

This book does not promote nationalism of a more intense kind, but in the early part of the book, she notes a general disregard about the country’s heroes and heroines from every historical period. She nearly taunts the countrymen for continuing names such as Havelock and Neill for islands in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago who were British military generals who had brutally put down the 1857 uprising. Vishnu Bhatt Godse was a traveller and chronicler of the 1857 war, but the book uses the spelling ‘Godshe’ as if to pre-empt any confusion with the person who assassinated Gandhi. The book does a great service by omitting Indira Gandhi from the list. Even though she deserves to be there on account of the impact of her rule of post-independent India, it is better to leave her out, because most of that impact was detrimental to the nation as a whole.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star