Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The preliminaries
Number of years from the present:

• 13.5 billion – matter and energy came into being in the Big Bang
• 4.5 billion – formation of Earth
• 3.6 billion – emergence of organisms
• 6 million –  last common grandmother of humans and chimpanzees
• 2.5 million –  evolution of the genus Homo in Africa (prehistoric humans, like most animals, were relatively insignificant), first stone tools
• 2 million –  humans spread from Africa to Eurasia, evolution of different human species
• 300,000 –  daily usage of fire
• 200,000 –  Homo sapiens evolves in East Africa
• 70,000 –  the Cognitive Revolution, language emerges, Sapiens leave Africa
• 13,000 – Homo sapiens the only surviving human species
• 12,000 –  the Agricultural Revolution
• 5,000 –  first kingdoms, script, money, and polytheistic religions
• 500 – the Scientific Revolution
• 200 – the Industrial Revolution

Note: Harari uses the word “fiction” to describe things that our five senses cannot detect, such as belief in religions and nations. That is, although many animals can communicate things like “There’s a lion behind you!” or “A fire is coming, run!” one thing that dramatically advanced human progress, as compared with the progress of other animals, was the ability to form “fictions” in the collective imagination.

The Genus Homo

• Homo sapiens belongs to the great ape family. For thousands of years, many species of Homo lived at the same time.
• 6 million years ago – A female ape had two daughters. One became the grandmother of all chimpanzees, the other is the grandmother of all humans.
• 2.5 million years ago – Humans evolved in East Africa and some journeyed into North Africa, Europe, and Asia, where human populations evolved into several distinct species.
  • For example, in an Indonesian island with scarce resources, big people, who needed lots of food, died first. Smaller people survived better. This species, Homo floresiensis, was around 3.5 feet tall.
• 300,000 years ago – Fire and cooking enabled humans to digest food better, leading to shorter intestines. 
  • Intestines and large brains consume massive amounts of energy, and shortening the intestines led the way to larger brains.
  • With fire, humans also gained control of a dangerous force.

The Cognitive Revolution – 70,000 years ago

• The Tree of Knowledge mutation: Accidental genetic mutations enabled Sapiens to think in unprecedented ways, which led to the Cognitive Revolution.

Language – 70,000 years ago

• Lots of animals use language, but human language connects a limited number of sounds to produce an infinite number of sentences to communicate lots of information.
  • Human language evolved as a way to gossip. Humans are social animals, and reliable information about trust meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, forming more sophisticated types of cooperation.
• Human language also conveys things that do not exist. 
  • Legends, myths, and gods appeared for the first time. Collective imagination allowed strangers to coordinate in flexible ways.
    • Large-scale human cooperation is rooted in fictions that exist only in people’s imagination, such as religion and nationhood.
  • The rise of limited liability companies was crucial, too. Because limited liability companies were legally independent of the people who established them, it allowed people to take economic risks.
    • (As opposed to being jailed or murdered for failing to pay back debt associated with one’s business.)

Foragers – 70,000 years ago

• Their varied diet protected them from starvation and malnutrition, and they were less likely to suffer when one food source failed. Also, because they roamed in small bands, they could not sustain epidemics. 
  • They were the first affluent society in the sense that they were relatively healthy and did not work many hours.
• They also likely believed in animism—the belief that almost every place, animal, and plant has feelings that can be communicated directly with humans.

Sapiens in Australia – 45,000 years ago

• Sapiens acquired the technology, organizational skills, and vision to leave Afro-Asia by boat and colonize Australia, which was one of the most important achievements in history.
• When Sapiens first arrived, there were enormous animals, including a 450-pound kangaroo, 2 ½ ton wombat, etc. Within a few thousand years, 23/24 of the animals weighing over 100 pounds became extinct.

Sapiens in America – 16,000 years ago

• Within 2,000 years of arrival, North America lost 34/47 large mammals, and South America lost 50/60.

The Agricultural Revolution – 12,000 years ago

• The transition began in Turkey, Iran, and the Levant, starting with things like wheat, goats, peas, and lentils. This life was generally more difficult than those of foragers.
• The average farmer worked harder with a worse diet. Being constantly bent over a plow wrought havoc on the body with slipped discs and arthritis. 
• Wheat domesticated humans because people had to live next to their wheat fields. It started as a wild grain and now covers 870,000 square miles.
  • Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and enabled Sapiens to multiply exponentially, leading to permanent villages around the fields.
• As for animals, to turn bulls, horses, donkeys, and others into obedient animals, humans destroyed their natural instincts and social ties.
  • In the dairy industry, animals produce milk only after giving birth and while the babies are suckling. To continue this supply (even now, despite knowing that these animals are sentient and feel deeply), one common method was to kill the baby, milk the mother, and inseminate her again. Or, the baby is locked in a cage to suckle a little and by 4 months it’s slaughtered.
• The stress of farming was the foundation of large-scale political and social systems. (People had to protect the grain, give it up as tax, etc.)
  • Empires generated huge amounts of information, and processing large numbers became vital.
  • Around 3000 BC, Sumerians invented writing as a way to store and process information outside their brains.

Sapiens living together – the importance of fiction

• Humans evolved for millions of years in small bands of a few dozen individuals. The handful of millennia separating the Agricultural Revolution from the emergence of cities wasn’t enough time to allow an instinct for mass cooperation to evolve.
  • But with collective fictions, people believe in a particular order because believing in it leads to effective cooperation.
• Complex human societies have all had imagined hierarchies.
  • Hierarchies tell strangers how to treat one another without being personally acquainted.
• Myths and religions helped; for example, theologians argued that Africans descend from Ham, saddled by Noah with a curse to be slaves.
• Gender divisions
  • Childbearing has always been a woman’s job, but every society accumulated cultural ideas and norms around this. 
  • Since myths, rather than biology, define roles, the positions of men and women have varied immensely, but patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. Why? There are many theories, none universally accepted.
• Additionally, Mother Nature doesn’t care if men are sexually attracted to men. “Biology enables, culture forbids.” Biology allows many possibilities, whereas culture forces people to accept some possibilities while prohibiting others.

Money, Imperialism, and Religion – 5,000 years ago

• Myths and fictions created artificial instincts that allow and force millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called culture.
• People have gradually come to see equality and individual freedom as fundamental even though they contradict each other. Equality is ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of some, while letting every individual be free inevitably infringes on equality.
  • For instance, US Democrats want a more equitable society, even if it means raising taxes to help the elderly or infirm. Republicans want to maximize individual freedom, even if it means many won’t be able to afford health care.

The Monetary Order

• The rise of cities and kingdoms brought new opportunities for specialization. How do you manage the exchange of goods between specialists? With money.
• Money was created many times in many places. It involved the formation of a new reality in people’s shared imagination. Money is anything that people are willing to use to represent the value of other things to exchange goods and services.

The Imperial Order

• An empire is an order that: (1) rules over lots of distinct peoples with different cultural identities and territories; (2) has flexible borders and unlimited appetite.
• Building an empire usually required slaughter of large populations and brutal oppression.
  • Forced and unforced assimilation are often painful and traumatic. It’s hard to give up beloved local traditions and stressful to understand new cultures. 
  • Worse, even when people adopt the imperial culture, it could take decades, if not centuries, for the majority to accept them as part of “us.” 

The Religious Order

• Since all social orders are imagined, they are fragile; the larger the society, the more fragile. Religion gives superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. 
  • Religions assert that laws are ordained by a supreme authority or universal truth, which places some fundamental laws beyond challenge, ensuring stability.
• But, to cover a large expanse of territory, the religion must claim a universal superhuman order that is true everywhere, and it must spread this belief everywhere.
  • The majority of ancient religions were local and exclusive. Universal and missionary religions only begin to appear in the first millennium; the big breakthroughs came with Christianity and Islam.
• The modern age has birthed a number of natural law religions, such as liberalism, communism, capitalism, nationalism, and Nazim.

The Scientific Revolution – 500 years ago

• The last 500 years have witnessed phenomenal growth through scientific research.
• In 1775, Asia accounted for 80% of the world economy. The global center of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when a series of wars subjugated much of Asia to European imperialism. 
  • By 1900, Europeans controlled the world’s economy and most of its territory.
  • Europe’s scientists are often given much of the credit: Canned food, railroads and steamships, medicine—these advances played a more significant role in European conquest than guns did.
  • In the 18th and 19th centuries, almost every military expedition that left Europe had scientists. (Charles Darwin went to the Galapagos on such an expedition.)
• But, science was also used to “prove” that Europeans were superior, so they had the right, if not duty, to rule.
  • Racist imperial vocabulary has transformed; people don’t say, “It’s in their blood,” they say, “It’s in their culture.”
• The most remarkable day of the past 500 years was July 16, 1945, when American scientists detonated the first atomic bomb, forming the capability to end life on Earth.

Capitalism

• “Growth” crystallizes modern economics.
  • For most of history, the economy stayed the same size. In 1500, the global production of goods and services was about $250 billion; today it’s $60 trillion.
• In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. His most novel argument:
  • When a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants to increase his profits. The more profits, the more assistants he can employ.
    • The selfish human urge to increase private profits as the basis for collective wealth is hugely revolutionary: Egoism is altruism.
• Credit played a big role. Credit is a system based on trust in the future; it enables people to build the present at the expense of the future. 
  • Western Europe’s sophisticated financial system raised large amounts of credit on short notice, which financed explorations more efficiently than any kingdom.
    • In the 1600s, the Dutch became the richest European state by securing the trust of the European financial system. Financiers extended the Dutch enough credit to set up armies, which gave the Dutch control of trade routes, which yielded profits. This allowed them to repay loans, strengthening the trust of the financiers.
  • This is why a country’s credit rating is so important. Credit ratings indicate the probability that a country will pay its debts. They take into account economic, political, social, and cultural factors.
• Ardent capitalists argue that the best policy is to allow market forces free rein, without political interference. Private investors, unburdened by politics, will invest where they can get the most profit.
  • But in its extreme form, the free-market doctrine is naive. There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft, and violence. Political systems must ensure trust by legislating sanctions against cheats. 
  • And what happens if the shoemaker increases his profits by paying employees less and increasing their hours? The standard answer is that the free market would protect the employees.
    • But in a completely free market, avaricious capitalists can establish monopolies or collude against their workforces.
    • Capitalism has killed millions out of indifference and greed. The Atlantic slave trade stemmed from profit, not racist hatred towards Africans.

The Industrial Revolution – 200 years ago

• The British developed and improved the steam engine, which revolutionized textile production, making it possible to produce more quantities of cheap textiles.
  • Utilizing the steam engine broke an important psychological barrier. If humans could use it to move textile looms, why not other things, like vehicles?
• Other crucial discoveries: electricity, the internal combustion engine, and petroleum.

The Present

• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most humans socialized in three spheres: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the local community.
• This changed dramatically over the last two centuries. The Industrial Revolution gave the market and state immense powers, and they used this power to weaken traditional family and community bonds. 
  • When people focus on being individuals (Do what you want! Marry whom you want! Who cares what your family thinks!), the state and market became crucial caretakers, providing food, shelter, education, health, pensions, and insurance.
• Most people don’t appreciate how peaceful this era is.
  • In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of 310,000 individuals and violent crime killed another 520,000. These 830,000 individuals are only 1.5% of the 56 million people who died in 2000. 
    • The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. 
  • Many believe that the disappearance of international war is unique to western Europe. But, peace reached Europe after it prevailed in other parts of the world.
    • The price of war has risen. In modern economies, foreign trade and investments are all-important; peace brings unique dividends.

Consumerism

• Consumerism and popular psychology convince people that indulgence is good for you.
• Most people live up to the capitalist-consumerist ideal, which promises paradise on condition that the rich spend their time making more money, and that the masses give into their cravings to buy more.

Happiness

• Family and community have more impact on happiness than money. People who live in supportive communities are significantly happier than those without.
• Expectations of pleasure, and intolerance of discomfort, have increased to such an extent that modern humans might suffer more than foragers or farmers did. 
  • Biologists believe that emotions are determined by a complex system of nerves and biochemical substances such as serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. 
  • Human biochemical systems keep happiness levels relatively constant. 
  • But, happiness could also be seeing life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.

• Analysis of other human species, how they evolved, and how they perished
• Details about the lives of foragers as the first affluent society
• Observations of Buddhism and how it differs from other religions by disregarding deities
• Why all the prominent theories about patriarchy’s prevalence fall short
• The creation of different types of money
• The three main factors that prevent people from realizing that the order (such as democracy or religion) organizing their lives exists only in their imagination
• The power of credit and how bad credit felled empires
• An intriguing segment on biological engineering (human intervention on the biological level to modify an organism in order to realize a preconceived cultural idea)
• How current fictions prevent people from finding happiness