Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Human history has always been a fascinating subject for me. Whether it is about the modern civilization, or evolution of the human species, or something as ancient as the creation of living things, the solar system, or going all the way back to the beginning of time — history (to me) is like completing a puzzle or solving a mystery.
History is not just about human civilizations or nations’ evolving behavior in matters of life, love, war, diplomacy, and peace. It is a consolidation of all events that happened or existed between today and the Big Bang.
“Sapiens” came up a couple of times on the internet. Once, I came across a video where Barack Obama was talking about it. Also, I couldn’t help but notice Bill Gates recommending it on his blog. Later, when I caught some of my friends talking about it too, that was the cliffhanger. I finally decided to read it :)
The book is authored by Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian and professor. It is based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
My Review
The book is fundamentally about the history of human species, particularly Homo sapiens. It does not cover how Homo sapiens evolved from other apes but narrates the history of Sapiens during the past 70,000 years. The author did an excellent job explaining the 70,000 years history in 480 pages.
The author tells the story in four parts:
- The Cognitive Revolution: About 70,000 years ago, we started to behave smarter (for unknown reasons) and spread quickly across the globe.
- The Agricultural Revolution: About 11,000 years ago, we switched from hunting and gathering species to a farming species
- The Unification of Humankind: We gradually integrated all political organizations into one global empire.
- The Scientific Revolution: About 500 years ago, the scientific revolution began. It changed our understanding of everything and set the foundation of industrial revolution.
I absolutely loved the first two parts because that sort of information is not commonly available. It was exciting to learn how Homo sapiens has evolved into an intelligent species, how it spread across the planet and transitioned from a hunting and gathering society to a farming society. It was fun to learn the history of our species from a completely fresh perspective.
The third and fourth parts were not just as exciting because we have already read a lot of recent history in schools and are aware of most instances on a surface level.
What I found a little offbeat is that Sapiens presents a western perspective and does not take elements from the East. Though it has a few mentions in some places, the book misses out on a lot of how the human species shaped in the East.
I also heard that this book is inspired by and is similar to “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (which I have not read). So, if you have read both, I’d recommend being your own judge deciding which one is a better read.
About The Book
The first edition of the book was published in Hebrew in 2011 and English translation in 2014. The book is divided in four parts (as mentioned earlier) containing 20 chapters in 466 pages and is translated into over 60 languages. I read the English version which is available on both Amazon and Flipkart for $15.
Here is table of content:
Who Is It For?
If you love reading about history, especially unraveling what’s beyond ation, race, or religion. If you believe that the earth is only a giant sphere and that the entire humanity is one race; this book is for you.
However, this book may not be a great source of knowledge if you are a historian.t does not contribute anything new to the scientific or historical database. Rather, it puts together a lot of events to summarize the entire history of mankind.
My Overall Rating: 4/5
Well, why not? I found this book entertaining, thought provoking with surprising good takeaways about the history of our race.
