Sapiens_ by Yuval Noah Harari _ - Eureka Books

Table of Contents OVERVIEW IMPORTANT PEOPLE KEY TAKEAWAYS ANALYSIS Key Takeaway 1 Key Takeaway 2 Key Takeaway 3 Key Takeaway 4 Key Takeaway 5 Key Takeaway 6 Key Takeaway 7 Key Takeaway 8 Key Takeaway 9 Author's Style Perspective RESOURCES

Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review of Yuval Noah Harari’s

Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind

By Eureka Books

Table of Contents OVERVIEW IMPORTANT PEOPLE KEY TAKEAWAYS ANALYSIS Key Takeaway 1 Key Takeaway 2 Key Takeaway 3 Key Takeaway 4 Key Takeaway 5 Key Takeaway 6 Key Takeaway 7

Key Takeaway 8 Key Takeaway 9 Author's Style Perspective RESOURCES

OVERVIEW Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is a multifaceted review and analysis of the current understanding of human evolution and the forces behind major historical developments, beginning with the Neanderthals and other Homo species to Homo sapiens, leading up to the present day, and projecting what might happen in the future. When the first genetically identifiable H. sapiens appeared about 200,000 years ago, they, and other species of humans, lived much like other animals at the middle of the food chain, scavenging remains of prey killed by top predators. But then 70,000 years ago, H. sapiens developed a mental or social advantage, the Cognitive Revolution, over other human species, spreading to almost every continent of the world, and either eliminated or interbred with the remaining non-H. sapiens, such as Neanderthals. H. sapiens prior to the Agricultural Revolution lived as hunter-gatherers with few possessions. The domestication of wheat reduced the quality of life for the average human because it was less nutritionally diverse as the hunter-gatherer diet, but it allowed for massive population growth. Elite classes developed of people who lived off agricultural surplus but did not work the land. Inter-subjective beliefs about law, justice, currency, and religion appeared 5,000 years ago as people sought ways to cooperate in large groups of strangers. The first written language enabled humans to keep records and data beyond one individual's mental capacity and lifespan. Laws established hierarchies that preserved the status quo. Scientific discoveries increased in frequency as scientists learned to acknowledge ignorance and rulers sought resources like land and military strength. Capitalism developed as societies learned to use credit to reinvest profits in industry. Other necessary resources became nearly infinite as innovation and diversification

became industrial priorities. The current expansion of the state and markets into communities and families created the most consistent peace in human history. The future holds many opportunities for humans to augment their bodies. Maybe, someday, people will become a-mortal, or live much longer than the current lifespan because certain things that currently cause death will be eliminated, such as certain diseases.

IMPORTANT PEOPLE Yuval Noah Harari: Yuval Harari is a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Department of History. He has won numerous prizes for military history, creativity, and originality in research since 2009.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. A unique mental or social development in Homo sapiens enabled the species to either integrate with or replace other species as they spread to new regions of the world. 2. The Agricultural Revolution facilitated explosive population growth at the cost of human quality of life and the quality of livestock's lives. 3. Laws, corporations, money, and religion are collective myths, or inter-subjective beliefs, that collapse unless believed but enable strangers to cooperate and live in peace. The same forces that created the economy and social safety nets also supports racism, class divisions, and sexism. 4. Successive empires defined much of human history and helped legitimize rule across many different cultural groups. Successful empires integrated rather than subjugated their people when those people demanded equality under the empire's cultural values. 5. Religion may have originated when farmers no longer worshipped their seeds and animals because they stopped seeing them as equals, but as possessions, but still faced uncertainty about the future. The most successful religions are defined by morality, evangelism, supernatural forces, and universal applicability. 6. Before the Scientific Revolution, the unknown was considered unimportant because it had no

apparent bearing on everyday life. Scientists that accepted their ignorance of important things began using math and building on each other's work to make breakthroughs. 7. Economic growth relies on a collective belief in credit, which led to capitalism, or the use of profits to increase production and in turn continue to increase profits. The concept of credit makes or breaks governments because of its relationship with trust. 8. Happiness is a biological impulse that is not directly connected with quality of life, ease of living, possessions, or health. Whether humans are happier before or after major societal changes is difficult to measure and often unintuitive when it is measurable. 9. Humans are rapidly approaching an era wherein they can significantly augment themselves with technology, apply intelligent design to their environment, create inorganic life forms, and may achieve a-mortality.

ANALYSIS Key Takeaway 1 A unique mental or social development in Homo sapiens enabled the

species to either integrate with or replace other species as they spread to new regions of the world. Analysis It should come as no surprise, even to the most committed of believers in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the descent of man from the common ancestors of chimpanzees, that there are still some mysteries in the development of H. sapiens throughout history. Assuming that every missing link between fossilized specimens is discovered someday, fossils will not reveal the exact change in H. sapiens’ brains that allowed them to become the dominant human species on the planet. The stereotype of other human species, and particularly of Neanderthals, is that they were not as intelligent or capable as H. sapiens. Readers may be surprised to learn that, in fact, Neanderthals had a higher brain-to-body mass ratio than H. sapiens and were stronger and more adapted to their environment. H. sapiens, on the other hand, were probably less likely to survive the northern Asian regions where they first encountered Neanderthals. The evolutionary advantage of H. sapiens may have been in a new social intelligence that allowed them to discuss each other, themselves, and the community. In theory, this means that H. sapiens could develop hierarchies and discuss their competitors and, by extension, this gave them the tools necessary to lie, cheat, or conspire against Neanderthals and each other. This makes the Replacement Theory of H. sapiens dominance seem more likely, although the ability to gossip could also contribute to their ability to discuss the needs of community members, find consensus, and mediate conflicts.

Key Takeaway 2 The Agricultural Revolution facilitated explosive population growth at the cost of human quality of life and the quality of livestock's lives. Analysis Over many thousands of years, humans altered the environment by first hunting megafauna, such as mammoths and giant sloths, into extinction wherever they went, then burning forests to create grasslands for easy hunting, domesticating certain species of plants and animals, and advancing their needs in the ecosystem for humans' benefit. The Agricultural Revolution built on a history of environmental manipulation by rerouting water to supply fields of wheat, and cultivating livestock in large herds while preventing other predators from culling them. Preparing soil, sowing seeds, removing competing weeds, building irrigation systems, harvesting the product, and preparing it for consumption was more work than any human had ever put into feeding a community in history. Previously, communities would forage for food in the wild, hunt or scavenge for meat, and prepare it and eat it, without putting months of effort into anything they ate. Soon humans would begin putting years of effort into domesticating larger strains of crops or bigger kinds of cows. Today, humans consume food with decades of research and planning in its DNA. However, food still takes more effort and often provides less nutrition than foraged food did prior to the development of agriculture, just as it did for the first farmers. Even though humans are consuming more calories than ever, the health of the species is threatened by the modern diet and by the pollution of the environment directly or indirectly caused by the Agricultural Revolution. Animals have similarly suffered as a result of domestication, and the same drive for efficiency is hurting them and humanity today. For example, free-roaming cattle did not need antibiotics to prevent mass infections but, by keeping many cattle in cramped conditions, humans created the need for antibiotics to be used proactively, which has been a contributing factor in the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Key Takeaway 3 Laws, corporations, money, and religion are collective myths, or intersubjective beliefs, that collapse unless believed but enable strangers to cooperate and live in peace. The same forces that created the economy and social safety nets also supports racism, class divisions, and sexism. Analysis The fact that money has no intrinsic value may be a jarring realization in the modern era when it seems no one could live without handling money. The vast majority of the world deals, not in bartering necessary products, but in pieces of paper or metal that symbolize the value of those products. Therefore, a seller can assume that a buyer once had or did something of value, and that by accepting the money earned for that action, will be able to acquire something of value in the future. In a way, the cash given to a grocery store clerk represents the hours a doctor worked to get it, and the transaction moves forward with the same amount of trust as if the doctor had actually spent those hours treating the grocery store owner or the farmers who grew the crops. Today there are some minor movements to substitute this international monetary system with systems that favor local economies. Some cities encourage residents to use a citywide currency to keep capital within the local economy. A few communities encourage members to make deals to exchange goods and services in quantities of hours, making time the currency that simplifies the exchange rate between babysitting services and yoga lessons, for example. These projects have not caught on to a large extent, possibly because there is so much trust in national currencies. A dollar can be spent in any city in the United States and almost anyone will accept it. However, like the application of justice that values some lives higher than others', someone can believe in currency even when it results in unfair treatment for them. To someone who earns a lower salary than their colleagues due to institutionalized prejudice, the monetary system gives their labor a lower value. However, the cost of living for these people is the same, or higher due to the same institutional prejudice. So a person earning less for the same amount of labor is put at a disadvantage when they must use money, not labor, to pay the same amount in rent every month as their colleagues. In the exchange of labor for money, the person experiencing prejudice loses a percentage of the value of their work. Nonetheless, there are no alternative currencies that give someone a more equitable exchange rate of labor to money and, subsequently, labor to living space. Inter-subjective beliefs allow anyone to expect to be able to find others who agree with some invented aspect of the world and work together on major accomplishments, or they allow people to find ways to exclude or oppress other community members.

Key Takeaway 4 Successive empires defined much of human history and helped legitimize rule across many different cultural groups. Successful empires integrated rather than subjugated their people when those people demanded equality under the empire's cultural values. Analysis As an accomplishment for humanity, empires can be difficult to defend. The term is applied to many case studies that caused suffering worldwide, and imperialism, the extension of an empire's power through diplomacy or force, has connotations of exploitation, human rights violations, and greed. Weighing these negatives against the benefits of certain empires hardly seems adequate in some cases because the value of a lost culture or lives lost in war cannot be compared to the value of geological discovery. Empires have undoubtedly been guilty of a great deal, but have accomplished a lot, and humanity will never know whether a world without empires was a better world, or one with more war and less international cooperation. In fact, even knowing where one empire's influence ended and another began, and which created a less authentic culture that would be better reversed to preserve original customs, is just as unanswerable. Today, empires are more likely to cede power to residents and retire, rather than be replaced, a trend that contributes to the longest sustained world peace in history.

Key Takeaway 5 Religion may have originated when farmers no longer worshipped their seeds and animals because they stopped seeing them as equals, but as possessions, but still faced uncertainty about the future. The most successful religions are defined by morality, evangelism, supernatural forces, and universal applicability. Analysis For some reason, religions of the world tend to view humanity and the planet Earth existing on a very brief time scale, the whole world forming just before the creation of humans, themselves fully formed with a language and culture of their own. The fossil record seems to indicate that the reality was a much longer formation period for the planet, a gradual introduction of microbial life, a predominance of plant life and sea creatures for eons, then slow but steady evolution of animals on land culminating after hundreds of millennia in the H. sapiens. Then H. sapiens existed for several millennia in prehistory as an unexceptional primate in the middle of the food chain, until it finally became the dominant species and began making much more rapid advances in culture, language, law, and economy. A religion that reflects all of this history would have difficulty convincing anyone that humans are special and higher powers have been interested in their fate from the start. Organized religion, the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, seems likely to have begun long after humans started changing their fate in the natural world, and became a tool in developing social ties in larger communities where two humans might know nothing about each other except that they belong to the same faith. That knowledge can turn out to be very useful, since religions also aim to manage their believers' morality. Those two humans know the moral standards to which they can hold each other. The spread of a few dominant religions worldwide resulted less from practical social need, but rather from those religions' abilities to convince adherents about the veracity of the faith. Logically, a religion that is true and can be adopted by anyone needs more adherents, so earnest believers engaged in missions that expanded those religions' influence across the globe, creating some of the most powerful and long-lived empires in history.

Key Takeaway 6 Before the Scientific Revolution, the unknown was considered unimportant because it had no apparent bearing on everyday life. Scientists that accepted their ignorance of important things began using math and building on each other's work to make breakthroughs. Analysis In some ways, historians may sometimes emphasize the wrong obstacles standing in the way of early scientists. Humans do seem to be naturally curious, and organized religions did persecute some scientists for suggesting that the Earth was not the center of the universe and that it was not flat. But the largest obstacle preventing science from gaining popularity prior to the 1400s probably had more to do with humans' lack of interest in science. Farmers and elites had little reason to seek out knowledge that did not immediately impact their daily lives. Simply knowing something, like the structure of the solar system, did not make their work easier. The progenitors of science were probably religion and superstition because human interest in patterns led them to conclude that things like the stars affected their lives on a supernatural level. Chemistry began with alchemy, a religious practice that sought to transmute lesser elements into gold and achieve enlightenment [1]. Studies about the movement of locust swarms and flocks of birds began with oracles seeking patterns on which to base predictions. These unscientific practices also founded many of the common tools of science today. Anyone studying alchemy or astrology would attempt to make predictions based on past observations, the foundation of the modern hypothesis. Alchemists and astrologers documented their work extensively and studied each others' findings to create more predictions. Naturally, farmers or rulers would be interested if the patterns revealed allowed them to better plot fields or predict the success of their reign, respectively. Aside from using the stars to navigate and worship the sun, astrologers probably first introduced the notion that the moon has an impact on humans. Today, that fact is taken for granted. Humans are interested in space because there are now humans in space, that is where communications tools reside, and people want to be able to predict things like solar flares and comet collisions. Pseudoscience did not successfully predict anything because it did not consider the cause of star movements and probe the extraplanetary forces holding everything together. Science saw the importance of not leaving the question of how to the gods.

Key Takeaway 7 Economic growth relies on a collective belief in credit, which led to capitalism, or the use of profits to increase production and in turn continue to increase profits. The concept of credit makes or breaks governments because of its relationship with trust. Analysis It seems counterintuitive that the wealth of the world economy increases every year. Humans cannot make more natural resources. Practically all the raw materials of the world, from timber to oil to water, belong to someone who chooses to either exploit them or leave them alone. Renewable energy has changed this state of affairs somewhat by allowing people to harness previously underutilized resources, introducing them to the economy once sunlight or wind have been turned into energy. However, the world's capital has been increasing for a much longer period of time than humans have been making use of solar panels. All resources have a limiting factor, even if it has yet to be reached, preventing them from creating unlimited wealth in the market. Plants produce only so many seeds in a year and need land to grow. Solar panels can only be produced at a certain rate and only for as long as the substances required to make them are available, and the same goes for wind turbines. The only creator of wealth in the market that is truly unlimited is credit. If bank regulators did not have interest rate and insurance mandates in place, banks could conceivably turn money into a completely conceptual resource with no real-life connection to the dollar bills that the national mint can produce or the gold or silver the treasury holds. Since the digital revolution this has happened much more quickly because of the ease with which individuals can transfer money and manage investments without needing to handle currency. Credit is an ancient concept, but when it became a central resource in the world economy, it allowed for unprecedented growth where previous wealth was balanced by the gain or loss on both sides of the equation. And growth made it practical for individuals to expand their businesses, as opposed to continually fighting for their slice of a particular-sized pie, resulting in the economic patterns characterizing capitalism.

Key Takeaway 8 Happiness is a biological impulse that is not directly connected with quality of life, ease of living, possessions, or health. Whether humans are happier before or after major societal changes is difficult to measure and often unintuitive when it is measurable. Analysis Humans may have been happier before the Agricultural Revolution, a fact that might not surprise any working single mothers or country leaders today. As hunters and foragers, humans could count on their diverse diets to support their small populations even in cases of drought, but that changed when humans began relying on crops to support larger populations. Those larger populations also created stress as humans had to learn to live in close proximity for their entire lives, rather than being able to pick up and move if they encounter interpersonal drama. Population density made diseases more deadly and lifestyle diseases began almost the instant humans ceased migrating and eating diverse diets. The environment suffered, animals suffered, and careers created additional, previously unheard-of stresses. Today people still struggle as a result of the impact they have had on the world and the impacts of their lifestyles, although things are moderately less difficult than they were before the invention of medicine. Someday humanity may achieve pre-agricultural levels of happiness again, when they solve issues of food insecurity, disease, psychological pain, and social conflict. Science fiction often looks to a future when these issues are no more and humans can focus on more amazing accomplishments, such as space travel. A happy species of humans would definitely make a better impression on any intelligent alien life than a species struggling to feed everyone and still wracked with civil and international wars.

Key Takeaway 9 Humans are rapidly approaching an era wherein they can significantly augment themselves with technology, apply intelligent design to their environment, create inorganic life forms, and possibly achieve a-mortality. Analysis The future of technology is constantly changing and evolving. Considering the entire timeline of human development, a person might even be surprised at the developments humans have made so far in the fields of communication, medicine, or just the basic understanding of the world. The technology people take for granted in their daily lives was built on knowledge acquired generations ago, or just last week. Yet, the modern scientific boom has taken place over just a tiny fraction of the amount of time people have existed. The speed of development is constantly increasing. In context, the assertions of scientists and futurists that a few humans will be essentially a-mortal, the ability to live a massively increased lifespan, by 2050, or that the first person to live to be 1,000 years old is alive today, seems less far-fetched. The speed of technological advances in the past 100 years has been especially remarkable when considering the fact that things that seemed so unlikely in science fiction entertainment just ten or twenty years ago already exists. Astronauts are able to print three-dimensional objects in space, companies are developing autonomous cars, and doctors can grow new organs from adult stem cell tissue. Every person with a smartphone has more computing power in their hand that went into sending humans to the moon and returning them to Earth [2] and, in fact, those phones form the guts of numerous space-faring scientific observational satellites today [3]. In terms of human evolution, science is rapidly outpacing natural abilities to mutate new adaptations to the environment. Technology could feasibly take evolution's place, just as futurists predict, in our own lifetimes.

Author's Style Sapiens is written with the tone and structure of a long lecture. Sections covering different topics in the history of human development flow smoothly together. When describing cases that illustrate specific points, Harari sometimes brings together historical events that took place thousands of years apart. Often, Harari references scientific studies and describes their methodology to support his points. These studies are well cited. Harari addresses numerous contentious topics throughout Sapiens and does so with differing degrees of tact. In some cases, he separates himself from the reader in order to address these topics in the form of rhetorical debate or his opinion. In other places, Harari's tone is more condescending or accusational, usually when discussing religion or animal rights. He uses phrases like brainwashing and intellectual gymnastics when discussing the clash between religious principles and evolutionary imperatives. Harari also uses a cynical tone when describing what secular humanists of different varieties believe. He spends many paragraphs describing factory farming in depth, and to balance the negativity briefly adds that the current rate of population growth would be impossible without efficient food production. That cynicism is apparent in nearly every aspect of the book, probably because Harari spends so much time addressing the falsehoods underlying the social constructs that make modern life possible. It would be difficult to imagine a book on human evolution beginning hundreds of thousands of years ago taking a neutral stance on the validity of human religions or expressing the genuine importance of paper money without mentioning its relative worthlessness. Sapiens focuses on the history of humanity in terms of economic and political change, major wars and conquests, and military science. Less analysis in the book focuses on human development's impact on art and health. The book also frequently uses United States law, history, and culture to demonstrate concepts. Historically, it covers topics from the West and Europe alongside contemporary events in South America, East Asia, and among native peoples on every continent except Antarctica.

Perspective Yuval Noah Harari first studied military and medieval history in college before publishing work in the specialization of military history and earning his doctoral degree from Jesus College at the University of Oxford in England. In Sapiens he expands his focus into technology and health, but always with a view of the impact of military conflict and imperial conquest on those topics. Harari currently lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has won awards from several institutions and universities for his military history research and originality and creativity in research. A year before the publication of Sapiens, Harari conducted a massive open online course called A Brief History of Humankind, which covers many of the same topics as the book.

End of Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review RESOURCES 1. Kusserow, Arne. "International Year of Chemistry-The History of Chemistry." GIT Laboratory Journal. GIT, 25 Feb. 2011. http://www.laboratoryjournal.com/science/chemistry-physics/international-year-chemistry-historychemistry Accessed 27 June 2015. 2. Kaku, Michio. Physics of the Future. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2011, excerpt at http://knopfdoubleday.com/2011/03/14/your-cell-phone/ Accessed 27 June 2015. 3. Alexander, Sonja and Ruth Marlaire. "NASA Successfully Launches Three Smartphone Satellites." NASA, 22 April 2013, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/apr/HQ_13-107_Phonesat.html