“What a teacher writes on the blackboard of life can never be erased.” - Anonymous At any rate, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is one of the best books I have read in the past year. It is an exhaustive account of the evolution of our species and an attempt to explain how we went from a largely insignificant simian in sub-Saharan Africa to the most dominant species on the planet. He writes about a series of four pivotal events in our history that set us on the path we are on. The first, around 70,000 BCE occurred when human beings evolved imagination. This he calls the cognitive revolution. With imagination, came innovation and one of the earliest innovations was culture- a group of myths and shared beliefs. These served as an organizing principal that allowed humans to cooperate in large numbers. He writes, “Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.” This, he argues, enabled humans to live in a dual reality, “On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.” The second, around 10,000 BCE, is the development of agriculture. He has a very interesting perspective on this, essentially arguing that the quality of life deteriorated because of this development. “Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure.” We substituted a relatively easy existence of hunting, fishing and gathering for one of brutal backbreaking labour. He states, “We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” Judging the quality of life based purely on the amount of labour and leisure-time that the people enjoyed would suggest the agricultural revolution was a step backward, but the great thing about wheat is that there is virtually no chance that it will turn on you and attack you. Plus, it is possible to feed a lot more people on a much smaller area of land. “This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.” The third and fourth events that were pivotal in our past are inter-related: the unification of humankind and the scientific revolution. Recently, Christopher Columbus has been subjected to some harsh criticism and perhaps deservedly so, but it was his mission to find a shortcut to India that undermined the existing order on both sides of the Atlantic and set the world on path towards the Scientific revolution. Reverence for the past, for received wisdom, for traditions had long stood in the way of progress. Columbus’ voyage revealed that there was an entire world that European religions and ancient texts knew nothing about. It had a similar effect on the Native American communities living in the Americas who could have had (at best) no knowledge of the previous 3,5oo years- the lowest estimate of when the Innuit migrated to the Americas. Contact between the two worlds changed everything for both. “The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions. Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the world was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur’an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe – a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures.” Overall, Sapiens is a tremendous piece of writing, engaging and informative. The perspective that Yuval Noah Harari brings to the historical development of humanity is reminiscent of his teacher’s Jared Diamond, author of “Guns, Germs and Steel” (another fantastic book). If you are at all interested in where we have come from as a species and why we behave as we do, you should pick up this title. In the meantime, try watching his Ted Talk below.
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