Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Book Summary

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari

There is a question that follows us throughout our existence. “Who are we and what does it mean to be human?” The mechanism that pushes human knowledge forward is fuelled by curiosity. Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari brings insights from science and the humanities together to answer the curiosity of what means to be human with his book: “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”.

As the book portrays, human history has been shaped by three major revolutions. Firstly, there was the Cognitive Revolution, which happened more than 70,000 years ago. The cognitive revolution allowed humans to maintain free will while creating common systems, such as money, that required only belief in order to be realized. When the Cognitive Revolution occurred, sapiens were able to imagine and describe things which do not exist in the real world.

Ultimately, the Scientific Revolution brought forward the period when humans made the transition to a scientific and factual approach towards life. According to the book, this period started 500 years ago and it is constantly improving. These revolutions serve as proof that humans were able to form ideas that no other life form was able to do, such as politics, religion and capitalism.

In contemporaneous times, ‘Sapiens’ represents the only remaining species of human. A very long time ago, 100,000 years ago to be more precise, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one – us, the Homo Sapiens. According to the book, Homo Sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.

Most humans assume that we were always the ones in charge. Naturally, we feel entitled to everything given our superior knowledge and intelligence when compared to animals. However, Yuval Noah Harari and his book serve as a reminder to us that long before we built the pyramids, wrote symphonies, or walked on the moon, there was nothing special about us.

#sapiens #YuvalNoahHarari #ABriefHistoryofHumankind
It is important to note that other species also have big brains and certain intellectual capabilities, but the Homo Sapiens were successful due to their ability to cooperate on a large-scale. Humans have learnt how to organize as nations, companies and religions.

Apart from science and intellectual capabilities, capitalism is undoubtedly another force to which humans identify with. The author argues that capitalism is different from wealth. Capitalism is when you take earnings from a venture and re-invest into production by opening more factories, hiring more labourers, investing, etc.

The author also goes into discussing the notorious relation between money and happiness. Harari brings forward well-documented research that shows that a person’s happiness has little to do with material circumstances. But there is a catch: Money can certainly make a difference on a person’s happiness, but only when it lifts us out of poverty. Any more than that, it is proved that money has little to no influence on someone’s happiness and having more money after a certain point doesn’t mean anything. Money doesn’t bring happiness, but it can make the problems that make you unhappy to go away.
Happiness is a persistent theme in the book ‘Sapiens’. And that is only natural considering that it’s a book about humans and humans are obsessed with the idea of happiness. Harari is suggesting in the book that the lives lived by sapiens today may be worse than the lives humans lived 15,000 years ago. However, this argument seems absurd considering the comfort, technological capabilities, medical discoveries (only to name a few) that we can enjoy in our present times and which are facilitating an easier and happier life.

Towards the end of the book, the author starts asking some pertinent questions that are relevant to the destiny of our species. One of the main questions is: what is next chapter for sapiens, for us humans? This question is difficult to answer because no one can foresee the future, but a certain trajectory for humans can be anticipated, taking into consideration our journey so far. Humans are destined for great things and nothing less. Our complexities are what makes us special and we should be proud of that. Certainly, there are things that we can improve upon, but life is a process and a beautiful one that is. So, sit back and enjoy the ride.

‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ provides a wonderful framework and perspective for guiding and interpreting what we do and how we act as humans. Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our challenges and our achievements, our past and most importantly our future.

[JamesGBrown-bxqb]

Happiness is a theme of the book. I agree with the author that humans were most likely more "happy" 15, 000 years ago then they are today. Although their lives were shorter and harder, they were undoubtedly more meaningful because their is meaning was found in the struggle to survive. A life without struggle is empty and hollow. Most people in the west have no struggle for basic survival they the human brain creates a struggle to survive with our own minds. Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders are an expression that basic human need, and millions of years of evolution, that guides us to struggle against something, even if it is only ourselves.

[extremelucky]

I am half way into the audio version of this book. This is an excellent summary. Wish I watched this before I started reading the book.

[wln]

Love the video, but your missing some very important key points; In particular

-The cognitive revolution it was communication that allowed us to cooperate with one another but I love that you mention other mammals having large brains like we do. I’m thinking of large aquatic mammals that have sophisticated communities that work together, travel in packs, help each other hunt and kill prey their entire life that have intricate languages that are unique to each pod! I think this is such an amazing point as we share the planet with so many other animals, microorganisms, and Ecosystems that we most def have begun to harm. With all of our “science” and sophistication and over population waste war and greed. It’s funny that we only favor verbal and written communication and can’t understand animals. A shame really. The clinical trauma world in particular has begun to study large mammals and their response to stress to understand how to help other humans heal from trauma. Anyone interested—-> google Peter Levine Ph.D

-Secondly the author clearly points out that it made no logical sense that we shifted from a hunter gatherer society to agriculture. In a hunter gatherer society we only had to work 4 hours a day and had a lot of variety in our diet that we know is what enabled us to keep a healthy microbiome and therefore healthy immune system. Agriculture helped us feed more people but our quality of life was greatly lessened; we had to work a lot harder and our food now sucked. This could be called the roots of over population. Life became a lot more complicated for us after this. I found this to be a really important point!

-The emergence of empires and religion forced the world into global consciousness and global unification

-The scientific revolution helped save many peoples lives, solved problems. Placed some responsibility on the human instead of solely on God and Institutions

-He introduced us to the idea of future hybrid humans and AI and the potential dangers. Some scary predictions about the dangers of a lot of data and power falling into the same few hands of white man.

-explains how the quality of life a few today comes at the expense of women, indigenous community, black, brown, Asian communities.

[mustaphameharich]

Read the book, but this video helped me understand it more and it also motivated to read it again.

[atulbhartiya]

Sapiens should be taught in schools as a mandatory to avoid shallow issues.

[eloraibyunivers]

Thank you for the precise summary! We need more of these, especially for the massive books.

[matthewenglish]

The description of the agricultural revolution at the beginning is pretty misleading. The agricultural revolution that took place 10, 000 years was not an improvement on farming techniques that took place mostly in Europe. Instead, it was the discovery of agricultural. Humans started growing crops and domesticating animals for the first time.

[victoriousteex-_]

Sapiens is the best book n this decade

[daanwarnas]

It’s confronting to see the trophy, because my life sometimes really feels like living from achievement to achievement 🏆

[nhathoang]

I just finished this book after more than a year reading, and i remembered mostly the main point that we are all connected by legends and becoming ones

[sofi]

Does Easier means Happier life? This is his point about happiness, we can get used to anything like comfort, technology or medical safety. This is not where our true joy lays.

[doobyanep]

Thank you for a great Summary
May you live a long life 🙏 ❤
Stay blessed

[pengzhou]

Yuval Noah Harari has taught us all a lesson and you have made it into a entertaining video. Thanks for all your effort, cheers from Australia

[shreenikethanvk]

We are so insignificant that it mattes almost nothing for this universe, but with little resource that we got evolved, utilised and explored in very less amount of time this which makes us great and is of great significance to our own human history.

[oopalonga]

I'm not sure you should mix a critique of a book with a synopsis, esp if you aren't giving the syllogism for which the author provides in his book explaining his position

[sandro-nigris]

Nicely done. Compliments for the great job!

[pavpav]

Fantastic debrief of a complex book, very well done..!! 👏🏼👏🏼

[keisyisbeefy]

This is a book everyone needs to try to understand

[emilystiger]

I hope this form of book review encourages more reading. I would give this review higher marks if the graphics were more in line with the book's words. For example the old overused sketch of the monkey's direct ascent to sapiens isn't an accurate reflection of the book.

[SunRaven]

Great book, except the part about morality as a invented, not discovered. We should make differentiation between what is discovered, which is what is law of the universe, what is real and experimental like science. And something that is invented like way we interact, language, way in which we speak, write, symbols and organize. So math is discovered, but a way in which we will put it on paper is invented. Same as morality, it is discovered but the way in which we interpret it is invented.