Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Hebrew: קיצור תולדות האנושות‎, [Ḳitsur toldot ha-enoshut]) is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011[1] based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014.[2][3] The book 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. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences.

For Latin word Sapiens, see Sapiens (disambiguation).
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
First edition (Hebrew)
AuthorYuval Noah Harari
Original titleקיצור תולדות האנושות
CountryIsrael
LanguageHebrew, English
SubjectHistory, cultural evolution
GenreNon-fiction
PublisherDvir Publishing House Ltd. (Israel)
Harper
Publication date
2011 (in Hebrew), 2014 (in English)
Pages443
ISBN978-0062316097
Followed byHomo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow 

The book has gathered mixed reviews. While it was positively received by the general public, scholars with relevant subject matter expertise have been very critical of its scientific claims.

Summary

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

Harari surveys the history of humankind in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. He divides the history of Sapiens into four major parts:[4]

  1. The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when Sapiens evolved imagination).
  2. The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).
  3. The unification of humankind (the gradual consolidation of human political organisations towards one global empire).
  4. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1500 CE, the emergence of objective science).
Afterword:
The Animal that Became a God
     We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.
      In the last few decades we have at least made some real progress as far as the human condition is concerned, with the reduction of famine, plague and war. Yet the situation of other animals is deteriorating more rapidly than ever before, and the improvement in the lot of humanity is too recent and fragile to be certain of.

Sapiens Afterword at p. 415

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.[5] 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 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 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.[6] 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.

Harari cites Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) as one of the greatest inspirations for the book by showing that it was possible to "ask very big questions and answer them scientifically".[7]

Reception

Public reception

First published in Hebrew in 2011 and then in English in 2014, the book has been translated into over 60 languages (as of September 2020).[8] It also made to The New York Times best-seller list and won the National Library of China's Wenjin Book Award for the best book published in 2014.[9][10] Writing four years after its English-language publication, Alex Preston wrote in The Guardian that Sapiens had become a "publishing phenomenon" with "wild success" symptomatic of a broader trend toward "intelligent, challenging nonfiction, often books that are several years old".[11] Concurrently, The Guardian listed the book as among the ten "best brainy books of the decade".[12] The Royal Society of Biologists in the UK shortlisted the book in its 2015 Book Awards.[13] Bill Gates ranked Sapiens among his ten favorite books[14] and Mark Zuckerberg also recommended it.[15]

Scholarly reception

Anthropologist Christopher Robert Hallpike reviewed the book and did not find any "serious contribution to knowledge". Hallpike suggested that "...whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously". He considered it an infotainment publishing event offering a "wild intellectual ride across the landscape of history, dotted with sensational displays of speculation, and ending with blood-curdling predictions about human destiny."[16]

Science journalist Charles C. Mann concluded in The Wall Street Journal, "There's a whiff of dorm-room bull sessions about the author's stimulating but often unsourced assertions."[17]

Reviewing the book in The Washington Post, evolutionary anthropologist Avi Tuschman points out problems stemming from the contradiction between Harari's "freethinking scientific mind" and his "fuzzier worldview hobbled by political correctness", but nonetheless wrote that "Harari’s book is important reading for serious-minded, self-reflective sapiens."[18]

Reviewing the book in The Guardian, philosopher Galen Strawson concluded that among several other problems, "Much of Sapiens is extremely interesting, and it is often well expressed. As one reads on, however, the attractive features of the book are overwhelmed by carelessness, exaggeration and sensationalism."[19]

Reviewing the book in The New Atlantis, John Sexton, graduate student at the University of Chicago, concluded that "The book is fundamentally unserious and undeserving of the wide acclaim and attention it has been receiving".[20]

Philologist Elvira Roca Barea criticized the book for its treatment of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, placing it within the context of the Spanish Black Legend.[21] On the same topic, in his review in El Debate de Hoy, César Cervera pointed out multiple historical errors, observing how "a large part of the claims made [...] about Cortés and Pizarro are false and incomplete, but above all they betray what he repeats over and over in the book: that it is not easy to separate between heroes and villains in history, especially when most current peoples are heirs to the supposed villains."[22]

Biochemist, writer and human rights activist Dr. Gideon Polya criticized Hararir's narrative for being "Eurocentric, Anglocentric, Zionocentric and neoliberal" omitting many important events in human history. In his review in Countercurrents he said, "Sapiens. A brief history of humankind is full of interesting and stimulating ideas, but inevitably as a global history it suffers from many important omissions due to a Eurocentric and indeed Anglocentric and Zionocentric outlook, as detailed in this review." [23]

Physician and author Rafan Ahmed published ইউভাল হারারি পাঠ ও মূল্যায়ন (Yuval Harari: A Critical Review) in Bengali where he compiled academic viewpoints regarding Sapiens A brief history of humankind. Additionally he criticized Harari's discussion on the origin of religious thought from animism to eventually monotheism by referring to renowned anthropologists.[24]

Bibliographic details

The original Hebrew publication was first issued in 2011 as קיצור תולדות האנושות [Ḳitsur toldot ha-enoshut], which translates to A Brief History of Humankind.

A 2012 English translation was self-published with the title From Animals Into Gods. The English translation was published in 2014 as Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, "translated by the author with the help of John Purcell and Haim Watzman", simultaneously in London by Harvill Secker ISBN 978-1846558238 (hardback), ISBN 978-1846558245 (trade paperback)[25] and in Canada by Signal (ISBN 978-0-7710-3850-1 (bound), ISBN 978-0-7710-3852-5 (html)). It was then republished in London by Vintage Books in 2015 (ISBN 978-0099590088 (paperback)).

See also

Notes and references
  1. Harari, Yuval Noah; Vintage (2014). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. ISBN 978-0099590088.
  2. Strawson, Galen (11 September 2014). "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  3. Payne, Tom (26 September 2014). "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, review: 'urgent questions'". The Telegraph. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  4. Ben Shephard. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind review – thrilling story, dark message, The Guardian, 21 September 2014.
  5. Book overview at Yuval Noah Harari's website
  6. Harari, Yuval Noah. Were we happier in the stone age?, The Guardian, September 5, 2014.
  7. Kennedy, Paul (January 12, 2015). "Sapiens". IDEAS with Paul Kennedy. CBC.
  8. Barnea, Nahum (2017-06-16). "Lifnei she-Sorfim et ha-Machashefoth (Before they burn the witches)" (Ha-Musaf la-Shabat, weekend supplement). Yedioth Ahronoth.
  9. China Book Award, CCTV News, April 23, 2015.
  10. What makes us human, China Daily, May 18, 2016, p. 20.
  11. Preston, Alex (July 29, 2018). "How the 'brainy' book became a publishing phenomenon". The Guardian. Archived from the original on July 31, 2018.
  12. "Best 'brainy' books of this decade". The Guardian. July 29, 2018. Archived from the original on July 31, 2018.
  13. "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". RSB. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
  14. Gates, Bill (2016-05-20). "My 10 Favorite Books: Bill Gates". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-28.
  15. "I finally read 'Sapiens,' the book that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both recommend to everyone – and I get why Silicon Valley loves it so much". Business Insider. 2019-04-14. Retrieved 2020-06-23.
  16. Hallpike, C. R. A Response to Yuval Harari's 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind', New English Review, December 2017.
  17. Mann, Charles C. (6 February 2015). "How Humankind Conquered the World". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  18. Tuschman, Avi (16 June 2016). "How humans became human". The Washington Post. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  19. Strawson, Galen (11 September 2014). "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2016.
  20. "A Reductionist History of Humankind". The New Atlantis. Retrieved 2018-08-15.
  21. Arranz, Vidal (2019-06-02). "La mayor alucinación colectiva de Occidente". El Norte de Castilla (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  22. Cervera, César (2020-12-26). "La leyenda negra presente en el gran superventas de los últimos años". El Debate de Hoy (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  23. "Review: "Sapiens. A brief history of humankind" – Palestinian Genocide, Muslim Holocaust & Climate Genocide Ignored". Countercurrents. 2019-03-19. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  24. "ইউভাল হারারি পাঠ ও মূল্যায়ন (পশ্চিমা অ্যাকাডেমিকদের চোখে)". Wafi Life. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  25. "A brief history of human kind". idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-07-25.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.