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