Concept discussion: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens is a non fiction that I started reading when the lock-down started and it took me 3 months to finish reading it. However, this book was not like any other piece of non-fiction I have read before. 

Sapiens is a book that was written by the author Yuval Noah Harari originally in the Hebrew language and later in English. This book talks about the evolution of the archaic human species, and finally the coming into existence of what we came to know as Homo sapiens or the modern man. The book starts off with the Stone Age and follows through 4 major events in history: The Cognitive Revolution, The Agriculture Revolution, The Unification of Mankind and finally the Scientific Revolution.

Instead of making the readers just gobble facts about history, the book mainly indulges in a discussion with a smooth streamlined sequence of  events and the philosophy behind each event of creation, discovery and destruction. The book approaches each development through an amalgamation of natural and social sciences. 

Some of the interesting discussions in the book are related to the life of hunters and gatherers and how they might have had a better life than the modern man. The Cognitive revolution, the innate nature of humans to gossip which led to the start of the very first linguistics and  hence the start of stories and existence of concepts like religion.The mysterious nature of the extinction of the Neanderthals was another topic of discussion, with contemplation of  rivalry among the Sapiens and the Neanderthals. The emergence of the patriarchal society was also a question of big debate since all the arguments that have been put forwarded by historians and sociologists have been refuted by the author himself with logical reasoning. 

The Agriculture Revolution has been argued by the author to have worsened the quality of life compared to the hunter-gatherer life even though it decreased mortality and led to the domestication of animals. 

The disadvantages of the barter system led to the start of mints for money production. Never having had the opportunity to study economics or law, I was fascinated by the entire concept of limited liability companies and the explanation through the story of the emergence of the first French automobile company Peugeot. 

Although I found the subject of human rights being unreal blasphemous, I was astounded by how the author deconstructs and falsifies the main theme of the American constitution - equality, using the logic of a biologist (I shamelessly acknowledge this - being a representative of this scientific community. Scientists also being a part of the society have always tried to maintain an air of neutrality and kept their respectful silence where equality comes into question.) . The author mentions that the belief in common ideologies like the belief in a common god and nation has led to the unification of humankind the emergence of laws and human rights created by the Sapiens themselves and has changed constantly over time with change in perspective of the masses, as has been discussed using the example of Hammurabi's code of law.

The Scientific Revolution as has been discussed by Harari was built on the foundations of the innovation of European thought. Capitalistic ideas, the author argues has been one of the main drivers of the major scientific discoveries. However through some internet research, I have found that some of the author's ideas about imperialistic reasoning for scientific developments has faced rebuttal from the scientific community. 

The book ends on an exciting note on what is the future of the human race and whether the fall of humanity might lead to the rise of a dynasty of intelligent cockroaches or half human robots- cyborgs.

The book caters to a wide range of readers, not only among esoteric scholars but also for readers who come from every other walk of life and do not have any idea about the history of mankind. The simplicity of the language used in the book with proper story-like description of scientific, economic, legal and social jargon is also very reader friendly.

I am very excited to move ahead to the second work by the author called Homo Deus.