Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark.” 

History does not lack for examples of intolerance. Even today, differences in religion, language, and skin color are enough to trigger human conflict, often with devastating results. If modern humans are so intolerant, it is unlikely that ancient humans would have been tolerant towards another human species. Perhaps genocide is the reason that Sapiens are the only human species alive today, Harari suggests.

“Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.”

Humans are social animals, and sharing news and personal details in the form of gossip is the first step in cooperation.

“People easily acknowledge that ‘primitive tribes’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis.”

There are no laws, no justice, no gods, no money, and no human rights: None of these exist except in our common imagination. These are stories we tell ourselves to cooperate and maintain order amongst vast numbers of humans who do not know each other.

“There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.”

The ancient hunter-gatherers and foragers had a wide and varied knowledge about their immediate surroundings as well as domestic abilities and survival skills. Today, we pay others to do many of our basic tasks, and we are skilled in only one or two areas related to our careers or jobs.

“Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes.”

With the introduction of agriculture, humans had to stay by their wheat to take care of it, feed and water it, and make sure the soil was suitable for wheat to grow. These responsibilities required settling next to the wheat fields and led to a less nutritious, less diverse diet as well as the added physical strain of farming as opposed to the earlier hunter-gatherer lifestyle. With more food available, the population exploded. However, since humans could no longer forage for other foods, their diet decreased in variety, and humans became more susceptible to disease and other ailments. Having to live in villages and cities, meanwhile, led to less security and more violence.

“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”

Within a few millennia, wheat went from being another grass in the Middle East to growing worldwide and becoming the most successful plant in earth’s history. Up until 8000 BC, when wheat was domesticated, humans were hunter-gatherers living a nomadic life with a varied diet. Upon its domestication, humans had to spend their time taking care of it. 

“This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”

“This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”

As an innovation enters the market, it is modified over time from a luxury item of the elite into a need for all and becomes indispensable for everyone. In the past, this process could take centuries, but with improvements in manufacturing and the constant presence of media, this process has been shortened significantly. 

“Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the centuries.”

Domesticated animals far outnumber humans on the planet, and with a population of 25 million, the domesticated chicken is the most widespread fowl to ever live. These animals do not enjoy a comfortable life, and little thought is given to their happiness or well-being. The practices involved in raising animals for food are particularly severe.

“History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.” 

Until recent history, up to 90% of humans were peasants who had no say in the direction their lives would take each day or in the course of their lifetimes. They worked to feed the elites of the monarchy, religious officials, artists, scientists, and thinkers. 

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.” 

Imagined orders produce orderly societies and allow large numbers of humans to live together prosperously and in relative peace. They are not conspiracies but instead the building blocks of mass cooperation.

“In order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.”

Imagined orders such as religion, forms of government, and the value of currency are hard to change since they involve so many people. Changing how society thinks takes a change of such large magnitude that it usually involves ideological movements or religious cults. 

“Biology enables, Culture forbids.”

The biology of human behavior tolerates a vast array of possibilities. Everything is natural. Culture and our shared myths are what compel people to align themselves with some possibilities while not allowing others. In terms of biology alone, no behavior is unnatural.

“Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.” 

Concepts of ”natural” and ”unnatural” come from religion and interpretation of God’s intentions. In terms of biology, whatever is possible is natural, as evolution has no purpose. Organs evolve to perform some function, and once they perform it, they continue to evolve to be useful in other ways. If a behavior is not natural, it does not exist.

“Consistency is the playground of dull minds.”

Contradictions and human culture go hand in hand, Harari argues, and understanding contradiction is key to creativity and change. Contradiction forces us to evaluate our values, goals, and ideas.

“Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”

Currency has value only in the collective imagination of humans. The worth of money is only in our minds. Its creation was a mental revolution. Money bridges cultural divides, laws, religious beliefs, gender, and social class. People who don’t know or trust each other can cooperate thanks to money because everyone believes and trusts that it has value. 

“Evolution has made Homo sapiens, like other social mammals, a xenophobic creature. Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’.”

Humans like humans who are similar to them. It is much easier and more comfortable to cooperate with and care for a human who looks like you, talks like you, and believes the same things you do. Other humans, our instincts dictate, are not to be trusted and perhaps even to be reviled; this instinct is the basis of prejudice and ethnic exclusivity.

“Two thousand years of monotheistic brainwashing have caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry. This is an unjust stereotype.”

At its most fundamental, polytheism involves the belief that the supreme power has no biases, says Harari. It has no interest or care in the mundane and everyday interactions of humans. Polytheists believe that all desires are mundane and fears are meaningless.

“Poverty, sickness, wars, famines, old age and death itself were not the inevitable fate of humankind. They were simply the fruits of our ignorance.”

Science is solving many problems once thought to be unsolvable. As scientific thinking became part of modern culture, people began to think that any problem could be overcome by acquiring new knowledge and applying new skills.

“Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world.”

Obesity is a double victory for consumerism: There is enough food for everyone to indulge in, such that they end up needing to purchase diet products.

“But the most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.”

Happiness comes when your expectations match your condition, says Harari. When expectations are high, even large improvements in our condition leave us unhappy. When things are bad and our expectations go down, another blow will leave us just as happy as we were before.

“A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.”

Harari argues that having a reason to live can make life extremely satisfying even if it is full of physical hardship and lacking in comfort.

“As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.”

Happiness, for most people, comes from aligning one’s personal misconceptions with the collective misconceptions of society. This way, one convinces oneself that life is meaningful and happy. Instead, Harari argues, happiness comes from the interactions of our nerves and neurotransmitters such as dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. Happiness is independent of external conditions; it is also independent of our feelings. To feel happy, we must stop the cycle of giving importance to our feelings and trying to maintain them as this brings craving and, in turn, suffering.