Author: Maria Chzhen
Sapiens is a book written by Yuval Noah Harari in 2011 in Hebrew. It was translated to English in 2014, and it is the first book ever written by this author. It is one of the most mind-boggling books I have ever read, not going to lie.
For the first part, Harari tells us the history of humankind. Humans weren't always Sapiens, the wise man. For millions of years, humans were in the middle of the food chain. But for reasons that are unknown to us, humans started to develop big brains and tools. At the same time, there existed several types of people. Homo Sapiens, the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus were one of those that we know about. They were all pretty similar. Some were stronger, and others were more innovative and clever. Nobody knows why everybody except Homo Sapiens went extinct. Still, everybody suspects that this is the fault of Sapiens and their genocidal ways. We all know from the events of the past century that Sapiens isn't the most tolerant species, and that is a massive understatement.
So how did Sapiens go from the middle of the food chain and the measly population of a few hundred thousand to taking over the planet, causing global ecological catastrophes, having a population of 7 billion and creating remarkable technologies that are difficult to understand?
The most popular theory that makes a lot of sense is gossip. Gossip was what united us in the first place. And a lot of imagination. Let's take dollars as an example. We know that a dollar is a piece of green paper with the faces of presidents and leaders. We take it for granted that several of these pieces of paper can get us food and that everyone wants to have dollars. Why? Because everyone believes in the power of the dollar and money. It's not that the dollar is something extraordinary in itself; it is that the dollar can get you to places. The same went for gold. What can you do with gold? The weapons made with it are too soft, it isn't that special. When the Spanish started to trade with other people, for example, the Aztecs, the Aztecs saw that gold is something that the Spanish were drooling over. Gold was also something that the Aztecs had a lot of. So now, the Aztecs also believed in the power of gold and in the fact that they were rich. Money and gold gave us something to trust.
The same goes for religion. It united people to fight for something they think is essential. Of course, a lot of it was way too bloody. It could be prevented, like when the Protestants and the Catholics killed hundreds of thousands over not agreeing what God's love means. But religion and mythology maintained relative order and law.
The same goes for Science and Mathematics as well. While physics has made me understand more and predict where the object would be the next second, it is still fiction. Fiction that explains motion and nature, but still fiction. Science made us deadly. But at least now, the humans had a great advantage over apes, giraffes, lions and other huge animals in the form of communication. It enabled us to do a lot of things. Some of them were peaceful and beneficial; some of them were warlike and bloody. A quote that I liked a lot was: "You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."
My feelings
My overall reaction to the book. I highly recommend the book to everyone. All people on Earth. It has some eye-opening ideas about racism, sexism, religion, consumerism and how it has swallowed us and others. It even talks about how nuclear bombs established peace on Earth. It is a long read because there is a lot of information to digest. But now I can understand why so many famous people such as Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg recommend reading it.
Overall: 9.5/10
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