Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens” was a brilliant read! His thinking shows the world in a totally different light from other writers and changed how I view our species. Like Jared Diamond, he takes vast time periods and puts them into a fascinating paradigm. He broke down human evolution into several revolutions:
- Cognitive Revolution – 70,000 – 30,000 years ago Accidental genetic mutations rewire Homo sapiens brains to think, communicate, and collaborate in unprecedented ways. Money, Empire and Religion are the three great unifiers of humankind.
- Agricultural Revolution – 12,000 years ago – Our ancestors domesticate a handful of plants (wheat, rice, corn, barley, potatoes) between 9,500 and 3,500 BC and still today it provides 90% of our calories. Allowed much greater population numbers.
- Scientific Revolution – 500 years ago
There are too many interesting ideas to explore, but below are a few of the ones that I have time to think about.
- “It is doubtful where Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league” – Harari is referring to Homo erectus, an early species of human. He thinks that technology and genetic engineering will so utterly change us that we will no longer be the same species.
- “And if you spend hours praying to non-existent guardian spirits, aren’t you wasting precious time, time better spent foraging, fighting, and fornicating?” Sapiens is the only animal that can tell imaginary stories, share abstract concepts such as future possibilities, etc. Sometimes these are beneficial, such as, don’t go to the waterhole at sunset, many predators visit there during the dry season. Some are not, if you become a suicide bomber, you will have access to a thousand virgins in the afterlife.
- My major insight from him is the idea of common myths unify human beings. These can be religious, patriotic, cultural, etc. An example is of a Limited Liability Company (Peugeot) is fiction. It only exists if we all agree in the founding documents of company. Our superpower is to allow millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.
- The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, at least 15,000 years ago. “This 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.”
- “A typical forager 30,000 years ago had access to only one type of sweet food – ripe fruit.”
- “The forager economy provided most people with more interesting lives than agriculture or industry.” They also had less infectious diseases because of population density and no domesticated animals.
- “A diet based on cereals is poor in minerals and vitamins, hard to digest, and really bad for your teeth and gums.
- Humans evolved for millions of years in small bands of a few dozen individuals. The Ag Revolution was “not enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve.”
- An expensive trip to Paris by a millionaire and his wife wanting a vacation “is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism.
- cognitive dissonance – The uncomfortable feeling that comes when you hold two conflicting beliefs, attitudes, or ideas at the same time.
- “The truth is that empire has been the world’s most common form of political organization for the last 2500 years.
- Beliefs in social order come from practicalities. Why were Africans regarded as sub-human to justify slavery? Because of their genetic superiority, they could survive in warm climates with malaria, etc.. This translated into cultural inferiority and the European plantation owners told themselves the myth to justify enslaving fellow human beings.
- “The Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians in 300 years.” “By contrast, over the course of 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions.”
- “Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age, or sexual orientation.”
- “The Christian saints did not merely resemble the old polytheistic gods. Often they were the same gods in disguise”
- “Zoroastrianism saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good god Ahura Mazda and the evil god Angra Mainyu.
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