sapiens a brief history of humankind by yuval noah harari

His ideas are interesting and often amusing: Why have humans managed to build astonishingly large populations when other primate groups top out at 150 individuals? Because our talent for gossip allows us to build networks in societies too large for personal relationships between everyone, and our universally accepted “imagined realities”-such as money, religion, and Limited Liability Corporations-keep us in line. Tackling evolutionary concepts from a historian’s perspective, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, describes human development through a framework of three not-necessarily-orthodox “Revolutions”: the Cognitive, the Agricultural, and the Scientific. Among the biggest: How did Homo sapiens (or Homo sapiens sapiens, if you’re feeling especially wise today) evolve from an unexceptional savannah-dwelling primate to become the dominant force on the planet, emerging as the lone survivor out of six distinct, competing hominid species? He also has some answers, and they’re not what you’d expect. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?įeaturing 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrationsdiagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.An Amazon Best Book of the Month for February 2015: Yuval Noah Harari has some questions. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition.

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth.

Sapiens is a book that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be human.

Sapiens a brief history of humankind by yuval noah harari