#Sapiens by yuval noah harari. full#
#Sapiens by yuval noah harari. series#

It triggers the industrial revolution, about 250 years ago, which triggers in turn the information revolution, about 50 years ago, which triggers the biotechnological revolution, which is still wet behind the ears. The 'scientific revolution' begins about 500 years ago. About 11,000 years ago we enter on the agricultural revolution, converting in increasing numbers from foraging (hunting and gathering) to farming. First, the 'cognitive' revolution: about 70,000 years ago, we start to behave in far more ingenious ways than before, for reasons that are still obscure, and we spread rapidly across the planet.

#Sapiens by yuval noah harari. series#

But the deep lines of the story of sapiens are fairly uncontentious, and he sets them out with verve.ДЇor the first half of our existence we potter along unremarkably then we undergo a series of revolutions.

#Sapiens by yuval noah harari. full#

The fact remains that the history of sapiens вЂ“ Harari's name for us вЂ“ is only a very small part of the history of humankind.Д¬an its full sweep be conveyed in one fell swoop вЂ“ 400 pages? Not really it's easier to write a brief history of time вЂ“ all 14bn years вЂ“ and Harari also spends many pages on our present and possible future rather than our past. It's easy to see why Yuval Noah Harari devotes 95% of his book to us as a species: self-ignorant as we are, we still know far more about ourselves than about other species of human beings, including several that have become extinct since we first walked the Earth. So a book whose main title is Sapiens shouldn't be subtitled 'A Brief History of Humankind'.

Homo sapiens, our own wildly egregious species of great apes, has only existed for 6% of that time вЂ“ about 150,000 years. Harari is provocative and entertaining but his expansive scope only allows him to skim the surface.H uman beings (members of the genus Homo) have existed for about 2.4m years. Throughout, Harari questions whether human progress has led to increased human happiness, concluding that it's nearly impossible to show that it has. The third, the scientific revolution, began around 500 years ago and allowed us to better understand and control our world. The second, the agricultural revolution, occurred around 12,000 years ago and allowed us to settle into permanent communities. The first, the cognitive revolution, occurred approximately 70,000 years ago and gave us 'fictive' language, enabling humans to share social constructs as well as a powerful 'imagined reality' that led to complex social systems. Harari argues persuasively that three revolutions explain our current situation. He notes that from roughly two million years ago until about 10,000 years ago, we were not the only humans on the planet many species preceded us, and some overlapped our tenure. Writing with wit and verve, Harari, professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to explain how Homo sapiens came to be the dominant species on Earth as well as the sole representative of the human genus.

Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become?ДЇeaturing 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, 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. 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.Дr. 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? Yet today there is only one-homo sapiens. One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark ZuckerbergДЇrom a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanityвЂ™s creation and evolution-a #1 international bestseller-that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be вЂњhuman.вЂќ