Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

By Yuval Noah Harari

concentrated summary by Mirdad team

Language

Although not the first humans, Homo sapiens came to replace all other human species on Earth.  

We humans are pretty special: we completely dominate the planet, and we’ve even moved beyond the Earth’s boundaries to explore, and possibly colonize, space.

Humans first appeared about 2.5 million years ago in East Africa, evolving from a genus of great apes known as Australopithecus. These early humans, such as Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, eventually migrated, abandoning East Africa for more promising environments. Adaptation to these new habitats led them to evolve into even more forms of Homo, including Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Asia.

It wasn’t until 300,000 years ago that modern humans, Homo sapiens, first appeared. This new species of human were not particularly special. Sure, they had large brains, walked upright, used tools and were highly social, but so did the other species of human.

And yet, despite there being nothing particularly special about Homo sapiens, they prospered and overspread the globe; all the other human species died out.

Homo sapiens could find food and resources, even in the harshest of environments, far easier than the other species of human.

This revolution in brainpower allowed modern humans to venture into the most remote corners of the globe. Starting in Africa, they spread out and colonized Europe, Asia, America and even Australia.

As humanity spread across the globe, however, with their improved hunting techniques, they left a trail of extinctions in their wake.

The capacity for complex language gave Homo sapiens great advantages, allowing them to spread and thrive.

perhaps the biggest benefit of language is that it helps create a common understanding between members of a group, and this is what gives humans their unique advantage.

Early Homo sapiens lived in small bands – roughly 150 strong. But thanks to language and common myths, it was possible to increase the size of our communities exponentially: From villages to cities; from cities to nation-states; and from nation-states to the global society of modern times.

Agriculture

During the Agricultural Revolution, humans transformed from foragers into farmers, which led to exponential population growth.

For most of our history, Homo sapiens have lived a nomadic lifestyle. The vast majority of our ancestors spent their lives hunting prey and gathering vegetation. Rather than settling in one area, they traveled to wherever food was plentiful.

But around 12,000 years ago this all changed. What we call the Agricultural Revolution is when Homo sapiens stopped relying solely on hunting and gathering, and instead began cultivating crops and domesticating animals. Within 10,000 years or so, almost all of humankind had settled into agriculture – a truly revolutionary shift.

Farming resulted with redundancy of food, which enabled population growth. In order to facilitate trade in large communities, humans invented money and writing.

But with the development of agriculture, the economy of exchanging favors developed into a barter system.

But very soon this bartering economy also proved insufficient.

As the trading market continued to grow, it became harder to find someone whose goods you wanted and who wanted your goods in return.

Writing

It was in response to such problems that, in about 3,000 BC, Homo sapiens developed writing and money.

The Sumerians of Mesopotamia were the first to do this. In order to store the information needed for complex trades, they began etching people’s transactions on clay tablets, using simplistic economic symbols. Around the same time, they started using barley money as a standardized method of pay.

The emergence of empires and religion pushed humankind in the direction of global unification.

As the societies and economies continued to grow, they became more difficult to control and regulate.

They developed laws to regulate how people behaved and systems of authority to ensure that people obeyed them. Thus, the first hierarchical societies were born, with a king or emperor at the top, ruling over everyone else.

The monarchies and empires of the past provided a great deal of political, social and economic stability. For one, they provided effective bureaucracy that homogenized laws and customs.

As empires spread, the religions they promoted grew in both scope and power. Sometimes by force, sometimes by gradual assimilation processes, imperial rule managed to corral many diverse ethnic and religious groups into a few mega-cultures.

Science

The scientific revolution modernized humanity, paving the way for new technologies, imperialism and economic growth. 

In the 16th and 17th centuries, a scientific revolution swept through Europe; and people started thinking how they themselves could improve society via science.

By applying the scientific principles of exploration, experimentation and observation people made huge epistemological leaps in areas such as medicine, astronomy and physics – each development helping to make society a better place to live.

As well as being beneficial for human health, the pursuit of science proved to be good for economies – something that many European governments were quick to realize. In search of new ideas and resources to enrich their nations, kings and emperors showered scientists and explorers with money.  

The European economies grew as a result of exploration and scientific innovation. Unfortunately, European gains came largely at the cost of local indigenous populations.

Today’s global society 

Today’s global society, with its central belief in the power of capitalism, is a legacy of European imperialism.

We have just discovered how the scientific method was used by many European governments to enlarge their empires and increase their profits. And it certainly worked; by the nineteenth century, the British Empire alone covered more than half the globe.

With this huge reach, the European countries pushed their ideas into every corner of the world. Local customs, cultures and laws were replaced by mega-cultures based on European norms – be they western religion, democracy or science. And although the European empires have long since died out, we are still dealing with our cultural inheritance.

Today, whether they live in Brazil or Bhutan, Canada or Cambodia, most people live lives centered around money and material possessions; we all want to maximize our incomes or display our wealth with our clothes and gadgets.

As the verities of religion are called into question, capitalist ideology comes to the fore. For example, in place of the traditional belief of waiting for happiness in the afterlife, we nowadays concentrate on maximizing our pleasure on Earth. This, of course, leads us to seek out, buy and consume more and more products and services designed to make us happier.

• The future

Scientists are currently making huge strides in fields such as bionic technology and anti-aging.

Within the field of bionics – the merging of human with machine .

Scientists are also making fast progress in the field of anti-aging.

So what’s stopping us? Well, at the moment, scientific study in these areas is limited by various legal restrictions based on ethical concerns.

Yet these barriers can’t last forever. If humanity gains the slightest chance to live forever, then surely our urge to get there will sweep aside all stumbling blocks.

It is likely that, in the not-so-distant future, we Homo sapiens will change our bodies so drastically through science that we’ll no longer technically count as Homo sapiens at all. Rather, we will become a completely new species – half organic, half machine.

It is very likely this new species of superhuman come into existence – the only real question is when.