Sapiens By Yuval Noah Harari (Summary)

This books show the evolution of the humankind from the age of chimpanzees to homo sapiens to the present world through the timeline of agricultural, industrial and scientific revolution. It discusses how homo sapiens cannot withstand a group of people more than a certain number due to which the concept of religion, culture, tradition and gods were introduced. Though agricultural revolution have brought us all the way to today’s world, the author describes why the agricultural revolution is the biggest fraud of them all. Similarly, he also tries to tell that scientific and technological revolution will be the only solution to our ever lasting problems. He also discusses the laws of ancient time to the current society and show how different they are. And at last he also discusses about what is happiness in its core?

For the first few chapters of the book, the author tries to describe the origin of Homo Sapiens. He goes back to the days when our forefathers were chimpanzees. He relates this by indicating that once there was an old female chimpanzee and she had two daughters: one of them was the great grandmother of all the chimpanzees and other one was that of the Sapiens. During the evolution, the human race was developed into many other forms according to the climatic conditions of different places. At first, the neanderthals of the Neander valley was the supreme race with its number reaching upto 100,000s. But slowly the race of Sapiens started to evolve and maybe around 70000 years ago, a great fight broke between the Neanderthals and the Sapiens. The number of Sapiens was only around 1000, however they emerge victorious. We don’t know anything about how the result got into our favor, but that was the turning point for the evolution of the homo sapiens.

Then comes the agricultural revolution. People started to cultivate the crops which was mainly wheat for the first few thousand years. People gradually began to think that hunting and gathering of the foods was a very difficult task. So people started cultivating the fields by cutting down the trees. At first everything worked out well. But after few years, the population increased in a rapid way. This was due to people didn’t have anything to do for the whole day except few hours of work in the field. To satisfy the demands of the increasing population, more area was required to cultivate more wheat. But the wheat only didn’t satisfy the nutrients that their body needed. So, the children got sick and the infant rate was a lot high. During the time in the forest, the foragers would go on hunting and gathering during the days. They got different types of foods which were full of nutrients. The fact that they got very small amount of food for day did not matter at all because the population was also small and the food was full of nutrients. This show that the transition from the foragers to agricultural societies was not totally a progressive one but rather a scam.

Then comes the scientific revolution where the technology development reached to a place where the world looks relatively small. Nothing looks impossible to the technological geniuses. Here the author provides a very important discussion on the basis of the analogy. He, unlike other religions and philosophers, thinks that poverty is not a natural problem. He rather finds it as a technological problem whose solution will be found by the development of advanced technologies. To solidify his view, he provides an analogy. During the 18th century people believed the lighting to be the doing of the god. Maybe god’s anger or anything like that. But today as the technology has developed, we know what causes lightning, we can use them in our favor and also remove the catastrophe caused by the lightning. Along with poverty, the author also says same is the issue with DEATH.

One important topic, the author discusses about is the happiness. According to some research conducted, people find it very unpleasant to raise a child. Changing diapers, washing dishes, temper tantrums, etc. makes it very difficult but every people says that their children is their chief source of happinees. Another case is the research among the drug users. Every drug users say that they got the feeling of happiness when they are high. So does this mean drug are the source of happiness? The same case is shown in the popular book Brave New World. Another case about happiness that is shown is: One of the two twins get in a car accident and lose her legs and other one win a million dollar lottery on the same day. But after a year or two, if visited the both, their happiness level will be same as that of that fateful day. Happiness differs from people and condition. What is your happiness?

In summary, this book gives a bried introduction in each and every aspect of life, how the world has come to be a place that it is. It is one of the book to be read for fun and if you want to understand how your life is the way it is.

I rate this book as 3.5