Review: Sapiens

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This was published 9 years ago

Review: Sapiens

By Glyn Davis

History
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
YUVAL NOAH HARARIHarvill Secker, $35

It takes ambition to describe the history of humanity in 416 pages. Yuval Noah Harari from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is willing to try. He starts the story 70,000 years ago and ends in the near future, when genetically modified humans – cyborgs – replace natural evolution with intelligent design.

Judgement day: <i>Sapiens</i> by Yuval Noah Harari covers the history of humanity in 416 pages.

Judgement day: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari covers the history of humanity in 416 pages.

The results are always engaging and often provocative. Early humans lived alongside other primate species, including races such as the Neanderthal who likely came to grief at our hands. A series of revolutions transformed first people, and then the planet. As Harari's history opens, a genetic mutation allowed people to talk, to cooperate in larger groups, and to spread across the planet. Harari notes the achievement of early modern humans in traversing the span from Africa to Australia.

"The journey of the first humans to Australia is one of the most important events in history," he suggests, "at least as important as Columbus' journey to America or the Apollo 11 expedition to the moon." It was the first time any people left the joined-up world of Africa and Asia to find and occupy a new continent.

The second revolution dates to about 9000 BCE, with the discovery of agriculture. This Harari considers a mistake. Humans gave up freedom to become slaves to plants and animals. The population explosion that followed came at the cost of famine and urban ills. In turn, animals suffered terribly from domestication; the cruelty of animal husbandry is a recurring theme of the book.

From agriculture came the elements of civilisation – trade, empires, money and cities. The third revolution is but 500 years old. The invention of science and its links to technology remade the world into its familiar form, and now opens the possibility we humans can escape the limitations of our DNA and live forever.

The portrait offered in Sapiens is frequently violent. The devastation of Tasmanian indigenous society by British settlers in the 19th century suggests how those with power deal with the other. Sapiens offers a history bleak and arbitrary. Chance encounters and random choices send societies reeling in new directions.

For Harari, biology is destiny. Our bodies were shaped as hunter-gatherers on the savannah. Without knowing why we binge still when food is plentiful, are fearful of strangers, struggle to balance short-term gain against long-run consequences.

Thus farming is a "Faustian bargain" in which humans give up a way of life less material but more rewarding for the dubious benefits of civilisation. A hero of Harari's book is Gautama, the Buddha, who taught people to rise above craving by experiencing the world as it is found.

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As the narrative approaches the present day, so the selection of topics becomes more eclectic. There is a nod to studies of happiness, which suggest our well-being has little connection with material circumstances. Religion is treated with even-handed scepticism, interesting principally for what it reveals about human psychology. Gender roles are explored only briefly, along with political liberalism. There is little about media or sport, language or social movements. Any grand sweep through history must be selective.

Along the way Harari acknowledges gaps in his coverage, and the risk his big history will distort complex reality. In places such broad themes impose too simple a pattern on vast swathes of human history. Is this latest neat resolution of a complicated issue in an eloquent aphorism entirely convincing?

Yet the book is often inspiring. Sapiens starts with simple story. Just over 6 million years ago, says Harari, "a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother." Try to stop reading after such an opening.

Has the journey been worthwhile? Harari often seems unsure. The "Gilgamesh Project" he ascribes to science suggests otherwise – why chase immortality if life is otherwise solitary, poor, nasty and brutish?

Whatever the flaws, Sapiens is compelling. There are unexpected takes on conventional wisdom, astonishing compression to produce impressive synthesis and many tough judgments about our species worth reflection. The prose is tight and clear, the range impressive, the reach across aeons and nations in places brilliant. Others will tell the story differently, but few with such skill.

Glyn Davis is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

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