Book Review| 'Sapiens- A Brief History of Humankind' -Yuval Noah Harari

 “Long ago, there were more than half a dozen species of human. Only Homo sapiens survived and thrived, transforming the face of the planet along the way.”

Humans are known to have existed on this planet for about 2.4m years. Homo sapiens, the ‘our’ kind of species, that has descended from the great apes, has existed for merely 6% of that time – which is about 150 thousand years. Well, maybe then a book titled ‘Sapiens’ shouldn't be ‘A Brief History of Humankind.’ It’s not tough to see why Yuval Noah Harari devotes almost 90% of his book, referring to us as a species: self-ignorant (which we sure are), but we still know much more about ourselves than about other species of human beings, including the ones that have already become extinct since we first stepped into this planet. In fact, it won’t be wrong to point out that the history of sapiens is just a snippet of the entire history of humankind.

 So, the first question that pops up in our mind is- “Can a 400 pages’ book cover entire 14 billion years of human history?” Well, let’s find out.

 

For the first half of our existence, we find ourselves wandering around aimlessly. Then, we undergo a series of revolutions. Starting with the “cognitive” revolution: about 70 thousand years ago, for obscure reasons, we started to behave more ingeniously than before, and we began spreading rapidly across the planet. About 11 thousand years back in time from now, we enter on the “agricultural” revolution, converting ourselves from foragers to farmers. Changing our lanes more and more from hunting and gathering to growing and eating. Then came the "scientific” revolution, which began about 500 years ago. This phase is said to have triggered the industrial revolution. Near around 250 years before, the industrial revolution sparked the information revolution, which provoked the biotechnological revolution. Although the latter has a lot to explore.

This is one way to brief things up. Throughout the book, there are mentions of many milestones, mainly the ones related to the development of language. We become capable of thinking sharply about abstract topics and cooperate in even larger numbers. Also, this phase witnesses the rise of religion and the slow overpowering of polytheisms by somewhat toxic monotheisms. Then, there is the rise of money and more importantly, credit. This somehow connected to the spread of trade and empires as well as the rise of capitalism. Harari keeps the readers engaged throughout the book and deals with even the most crucial matters in the simplest way possible. He clearly states that we may have been better off in the stone age, and he has some not-so-good things to say about the wickedness of factory farming, concluding that: "modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history".

He also accepts the common view that the basic structure of our emotions and desires is left untouched by any of the revolutions. Mr. Harari then goes on to say- "our eating habits, our sexuality and our conflicts are all a result of how our hunter-gatherer minds interact with our current post-industrial environment, with its mega-cities, airplanes, computers and telephones. We are living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah."

At one point Harari claims that Gilgamesh Project is "the leading project of the scientific revolution" and it aims "to give humankind eternal life" or "amortality". He seems to be hopeful about its eventual success. But, amortality differs from immortality. It’s because our kind can always die by violence, and Harari is plausibly skeptical about how much good it will do us. As amortals, we may become hysterically and disabingly cautious. The deaths of our loved ones may become far more unbearable. We may become wearier of all things under the sun – even in heaven. Although we may agree with JRR Tolkien’s elves, who thought of mortality as a gift to our kind, that they themselves lacked. We may even come eye to eye with Philip Larkin’s words: "Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs."

Keeping these in mind, there's zero assurity that amortality will bring greater happiness. After much research, Harari draws our attention to the fact that a person's everyday happiness has very little to do with their material circumstances. Money can make a difference for sure – but only when it lifts us out of poverty. After that, money just makes some unnoticeable differences, if not nothing at all. Certainly, a lottery winner is backed by luck.  But after about a year, his everyday happiness reverts back to its old level. If we had a "happyometer", and toured a first world country followed by the streets of a slum, there’s no guarantee that we would get consistently higher ‘happy points’ in the first place than the second. This point of happiness is a persistent theme in throughout the book. Harari keeps on suggesting that the lives lived by sapiens today, may be the worst in their 12,000 years of history.

Much of Sapiens is very captivating, and it is often well expressed. Although, as one gets deeper into the book, the attractive features are supressed by recklessness, exaggeration and at times, sensationalism. Also, Harari’s repeated misuse of "the exception proves the rule", can’t go unnoticed.

There's a kind of vandalism in author’s sweeping judgments, his carelessness about causal connections, his hyper-Procrustean stretchings and loppings of data. For instance, let’s consider his account of the battle of Navarino. Starting from the point that British investors had to part with their money if the Greeks lost their war of independence, Harari moves fast: "the bond holders' interest was the national interest, so an international fleet was organized by the British that sank the main Ottoman flotilla in 1827 in the battle of Navarino. After years and years of subjugation, Greece was finally independent." This is wildly twisted – plus, Greece was not even free back then.

Harari makes it clear that he abhors "modern liberal culture", however his attack may be a caricature and backfires. He mentions that, liberal humanism, "is a religion". It "does not deny God’s existence"; "humanity is worshipped by all humanists"; "a large gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of life sciences". This seems silly. It's also sad to see the great Adam Smith once again being portrayed as the apostle of greed. Still, Harari is probably right to say that "only a criminal buys a house, by handing over a suitcase of banknotes" – this point acquires piquancy when one considers that about 35% of all purchases at the high end of the London housing market are currently being paid in cash.

At last, talking about personal experience, I very much enjoyed the book. It's an excellent, thought-provoking journey of human history with its huge confident brush strokes paintings of enormous scenarios across time. It is massively captivating and unceasingly interesting.

-Shreya Roy