Summary of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

Part 1. The Cognitive Revolution

1. An Animal of No Significance

• Increasing complexity: Physics → Chemistry → Biology → Culture → History
• 3 important revolutions shaped history: Cognitive; Agricultural; Scientific
• What distinguished prehistoric humans was their insignificance
• Sapiens were not the only humans. What is peculiar — and incriminating — is our exclusivity.
• It makes it easier to believe we are the epitome of creation, and distinct from other animals
• We are distinguished by our large brains — not necessarily advantageous — and early births requiring constant help — which contributes to our socialization and education
• The sudden jump to the top of the food chain in the last 100,000 years that the ecosystem, and humans, had little time to adjust.
• A significant step was the domestication of fire to cook, freeing up time and building our brains.
• What happened to the other humans? Two theories: Replacement or interbreeding. Harari suggests this is important, since it determines racial distinctions — which can then be politicized
• One of the biggest “what-ifs”

2. The Tree of Knowledge

• c. 70,000 years ago, Sapiens left Africa, invented tools and has signs of religion, commerce and social stratification → Cognitive Revolution (CR)
• Sapiens conquered the world due to its unique language:

1. Supple and potentially infinite → huge amounts of information → complex actions
2. Information about ourselves (gossiping) → social cooperation
3. Ability to speak fictions (common, invented myths/stories), e.g., institutions → imagined reality. This allowed flexible cooperation in large numbers. Convincing everyone of a story constitutes much of history and power, Cooperation can be altered by altering the stories → Fast lane of “cultural evolution” overcomes the limits of evolution by natural selection, allowing adaptation to rapidly changing challenges. This distinguishes us from other animals

• “Imagined realities” make up culture; changes in culture constitutes history. CR is when history became independent (but still within the limits, albeit large) of biology in explaining our development; the real difference of humans is at the collective level; the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals.

3. A Day in the Life of Adam and Eve

• Evolutionary psychology argues many of our current social and psychological traits were shaped during the hunter-gatherer period from CR to Agricultural Revolution (AR)
• Unfortunately, there are few certainties (spiritual/mental life; sociopolitical structure; war and violence) because of the flimsy evidence — “curtain of silence”:

1. Artefacts not a significant part of hunter-gatherer life
2. Contemporary examples difficult to extrapolate

• Likely, there was impressive ethnic and cultural variety — no single “natural way of life”
• Some safe generalizations:

1. Small, intimate bands, without loneliness or privacy, but largely isolated and independent from others; fed themselves flexible and opportunistically; individuals had better knowledge of immediate surroundings (vs. collective knowledge); more comfortable and rewarding lifestyle — less work, boredom, disease, malnutrition.

2. However, lives were also harsh and unforgiving (e.g. child mortality).

• We need to beware of either demonizing or idealizing.
• Still, Harari argues we should ask questions and not dismiss the importance of this period of history, as they completely reshaped ecology — the most destructive animal.

4. The Flood

• After the CR, Sapiens acquitted the technology, organizational skills, and vision necessary to exit Afro-Asia and settle the Outer World.
• The human blitzkrieg into various climates and ecosystems reflects the incomparable ingenuity and adaptability of Sapiens.
• The journey of the first humans to Australia (later America and most other places on earth) is one of the most important historical events, as it completely and drastically changed the ecosystem, by causing the extinction of terrestrial megafauna extinction.
• The human contribution to fast ecological disasters would continue:

1. First Wave Extinction by the spread of foragers.
2. Second Wave Extension by the spread of farmers
3. Third Wave Extinction by the spread of industrial activity (current)

• We need to be aware of the microhistory of extinctions to appreciate the seriousness of the Third Wave Extinction we are now part of.

Part 2. The Agricultural Revolution

5. History’s Biggest Fraud

• AR was the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer → Revolutionized the way we live until today (e.g. 90% of modern calorie sources). It arose independently, in Middle East, China and Central America due to favorable local conditions for domestication
• Origins of the AR:

1. A long, gradual trap, from small alterations in daily life, that most did not realise and eventually became deeply embedded in more and more lives. The pursuit of an easy life results in hardship; luxuries become necessities and create new obligation.
2. Alternatively, we purposefully domesticated wheat to increase food surpluses to support cultural activities.

• AR was not necessarily ‘progress’: farmers’ lives were more difficult and less satisfying; extra food went so supporting elites. Plants domesticated us, rather than vice versa.

1. Required much effort; forced to settle permanently; many bodily ailments
2. No significant benefits in diet, security (economic and violence), at least until larger social frameworks (cities, kingdoms and states) that took thousands of years to develop

Disadvantages likely outweighed advantages in the agriculturist’s POV (should not use our modern perspective)

• Yet, the key benefit of AR was not individual, but collective:

1. More food per territory allowed exponential procreation; kept more people alive, albeit under worse conditions.
2. Similar impact on domesticated animals
3. This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual experience is the most important lesson of the AR. Time and again, a dramatic increase in collective power and success went hand in hand with increases individual suffering.

6. Building Pyramids

• There was no going back from the AR. Large populations could not be sustained hunting and gathering.
• Moving into permanent settlements → reduction in individual’s turf and high maintenance → strong attachment and high leaving costs → psychological transition to self-centeredness and “us versus them”
• Farmers could think ahead → long-term planning; worry for the future → foundation of large-scale political and social systems. Food surpluses supported a tiny minority of rulers and elites, and fueled politics, wars, art and philosophy (traditional subjects of history)
• Large societies (up to mega-empires) required shared myths for cooperation → “imagined orders” that future generations accepted (albeit having no objective validity)

1. Not always voluntary and seldom egalitarian; used for oppression and exploitation
2. Key to success and stability of imagined orders is that the people truly believe in it, by claiming as universal and eternal; educating future generations; embedding in material world; shaping desires

• Even changing an imagined order required belief in an alternative imagined order.
• Intersubjective realities that exists in the connections between humans → traps us and drives history

7. Memory Overload

• Large systems of cooperation require huge amounts of information no single human brain can store and process → requires conscious (artificial) effort to sustain laws, customs, procedures and manners
• Invention of numbers and full-script writing to express everything spoken and all potential types of information → our decisions and → lives are increasingly run by numbers
• Invention of methods of organization (compartmentalization) for multiple individuals to process such information (bureaucracy) → changed the way we think and view the world
• In short, mass-cooperation networks were not sustained biologically, but with imagined orders and devised scripts.

8. There is No Justice in History

• The imagined orders were not neutral or fair (all fictions).
• Imagined hierarchies and discrimination seem to be required → classifies large population into categories → regulate relations and enable strangers to know how to treat one another
• Different hierarchies are the result of accidental historical circumstances → perpetuated and refined over many generations by vested interests (myths created situations which reinforced the myth continuously) → rigid social system (e.g. black discrimination in America)

1. Supported by an extension of biological idea of pollution and purity
2. Exception: Patriarchy → near universal → likely not just accident
3. But all theories seem to be challenged by empirical evidence

• This is an important reason to study history: understand the distinction between biology and culture.

Part 3. The Unification of Mankind

9. The Arrow of History

• Increasingly larger and complex societies require more elaborate imagined constructs to sustain the social order → myths and fictions accustomed people to think in certain ways → artificial instincts → network of which became “culture”
• Culture is in constant flux, responding to external changes and internal contradictions → cognitive dissonance and reconciling leads to change (“culture’s engines”). E.g. liberty vs equality; chivalry vs. Christianity
• Yet, this flux has a pattern: On a macro-level, simple cultures (“authentic cultures”) tend to coalesce into larger and more complex civilizations and mega-cultures: Nation-state; capitalism; international law; science. Keep in mind they are not homogenous across the world, but nevertheless connected by the same concepts.
• The most important development in global unification is the idea of universal order that encompasses everyone in the species:

1. Economic: Money; single market and all humans were potential customers
2. Political: Imperialism; all humans were potential subjects
3. Religious: Universal religions; single truth and all humans were potential believers

10. The Scent of Money

• The rise of cities and kingdoms enabled specialization → exchange of many goods and strangers → required alternative exchange mechanism (other than reciprocity or barter) → Money
• Functions of money: unit of account (valuation, comparison); universal medium of exchange (convertible; resolves coincidence of wants); store of value (wealth); preferably transportable
• Form does not matter — cowry shells, banknotes, coins, ingots
• Money was a mental revolution; psychological construct → no inherent value; only value in common imagination (cultural) → required mutual (universal) trust:

1. Supported by political authority, which is, in turn, supported by money
2. Trust in money would spread because of arbitrage; we believe because other people believe it → inter-subjective reality in collective shared imagination

• Money is the most tolerant and cooperative of the universal orders
• However, increasing monetization of more spheres of lives → corrodes local traditions, relations and values, replacing them with supply and demand (“heartless marketplace”) → Economic history is a delicate balance
• Nevertheless, the unification of mankind is not purely economic; other stakeholders have overturned merchants, even to reshape the economy.

11. Imperial Visions

• Most past cultures become part of an empire, but when empires fall, they tend to leave rich and enduring legacies. Almost all of us are the offspring of some empire.
• Two important characteristics of empire → central role in history → drastic reduction in human diversity (Origins, form of government and size (territorial or population) do not matter):

1. Rule over significant number of distinct people (cultural diversity)
2. Flexible borders and potentially unlimited appetite (territorial flexibility)

• Contemporary critique of empires is flawed.

1. Empires don’t work → most stable political organization for 2,500 years
2. Empires are evil; destructive and oppressive → exploitation of conquered allowed for the development of much of human culture

• Since Cyrus the Great’s Persian Empire, all empires tended to be inclusive and all-encompassing; despite emphasizing differences, empires independently still recognized the basic unity of the entire world, a single set of principles; mutual responsibilities and a universal legitimate authority.
• Empires were decisive in amalgamating many small cultures into a bigger, common culture, to: (1) more efficiently govern; and (2) gain legitimacy.
• Imperial culture usually adopted from conquered cultures → facilitated acceptance by conquered, and later, assimilation
• Imperial Cycle: A small group establishes a big empire. → An imperial culture is forged. → The imperial culture is adopted by subject peoples. → The subject peoples demand equal status in the name of common imperial values. → The empire’s founders lose their dominance. → The imperial culture continues to flourish and develop.
• We cannot consider empires as merely “bad guys”; they bequeathed much of our culture.
• We seem to be moving towards a global empire.

12. The Law of Religion

• All social orders are imagined → fragile with larger society → religion provides superhuman legitimacy to fragile structures
• Religion has 2 distinct criteria:

1. There is a superhuman order, not the product of human whims or agreements.
2. It establishes norms and values that is binding

• To spread, religions also need to:

1. Espouse a universal superhuman order that is true always and everywhere
2. It must insist on spreading this belief to everyone (missionary)

• This distinguishes universal religions from local, exclusive ones
• AR was followed by a religious revolution:

1. Plants and animal were no longer equal, but subservient
2. Humans were elevated and exalted humankind over animals.

• Polytheism vs monotheism:

1. Polytheism allows for tolerance since many gods are possible. Polytheist empires did not force subjects to convert.
2. Monotheism emerged when some believed their particular patron was the only god.
3. The breakthrough monotheistic religion was Christianity since it was missionary in nature, attempting to destroy all competitors.
4. Nevertheless, monotheism maintain aspects of polytheism (e.g. pantheon of saints, instead of gods) → Syncretism, the simultaneous avowal of different, contradictory ideas and combination of rituals and practices from different sources

• Dualistic religions espouse the existence of two opposing powers of good and evil → solves the Problem of Evil → adopted by monotheistic religions
• Natural law religions that disregarded God emerged in Afro-Asia (e.g. Buddhism).
• The boundary between religion and ideologies are unclear. Modernity also has its own religions and missionary efforts. Liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism can be considered natural-law religions, since they also believe in some superhuman order based on some ‘natural’ law for organizing society.
• Unlike theist religions, humanist religions worship humanity: we have a unique and sacred nature, determines meaning, and our good is the supreme good. Three sects:

1. Liberal humanism: humanity as individual humans → worships liberty and human rights.
2. Socialist humanism: humanity as collective → worships equality

• Both liberal and socialist humanism are derived from monotheism:

1. Liberal humanism: free and eternal souls
2. Socialist humanism: all souls are equal before God

• The only non-monotheist-derived religion is evolutionary humanism (e.g. Nazism): humanity is not universal and eternal, but can evolve (mutate) and degenerate into sub-humans or superhumans → need to protect mankind to ensure progress
• The future of liberal humanism and evolutionary humanism is unclear given our increasing knowledge of human biology (deterministic biology; ability to create superhumans).

13. The Secret of Success

• The process of expansion and unification was not linear or without interruptions, but probably an inevitable result of historical dynamics
• That said, the end result need not be the particular global society we have now. There are myriad paths with various probabilities. Such an experiment is impossible, so we cannot know with certainty.
• “How” vs “why” approach to history — descriptive vs. causal
• Benefit of hindsight contributes to ‘deterministic’ ideas, but history is a level-two chaotic system that reacts to predictions about it. We thus study history to recognize that it is neither natural nor inevitable; to widen our horizons.
• Human wellbeing does not necessarily improve with history. It is only culture that spreads.

Part 4. The Scientific Revolution (SR)

14. The Discovery of Ignorance

• SR was revolutionary because it was the first time we believed we could obtain new abilities (“technology”).
• SR Feedback Loop (“history’s chief engine”): Institution provide resources for research, which gives new powers, some of which are reinvested in research (incentives). Modern science had a unique alliance with imperialism (power) and capitalism (resources). Science is neutral, but its costs means it is dictated by political, economic and ideological considerations
• SR was a “revolution in ignorance” — we know that we don’t know and sought new knowledge → More dynamic, supple and inquisitive à increase in capacity
• SR resulted in change in mindset and priorities:

1. “Many people now believe the solution to problems is technological”
2. “…obsession with military technology”
3. Ideal of progress, human action against inevitability, even against death. Evidenced by the exponential progress made.

15. The Marriage of Science and Empire

• Why Europe? (The Great Divergence): “thought and organized their societies differently” — ideologies and institutions
• Science and imperialism are inseparable in thought: “mentality of [exploration and] conquest” of both land and knowledge to “master the world”.
• Empty maps reflected the common admittance of ignorance; and claims the conquest of Aztecs, Incas and Asian empires was due to them not “show[ing] interest in the world surrounding them, but then also adds in other factors (e.g. local peoples miscalculated)
• Imperialists did science at the same time for:

1. Practical benefits: Rawlinson’s Mesopotamian Cuneiform help understand local languages to better rule subject peoples.
2. Ideological justification: White man’s burden; social Darwinism

16. The Capitalist Creed

• The modern economy is based on trust that the future will have more than the present (“growth”) E.g., Banks can loan 10x their reserves (credit) → investment in production (“capital”) using non-existent money (no longer limited) → enabled growth
• Trust was based on the ideal of progress (win-win), which is based on scientific and technological advances
• Trust was not blind faith: Loans had to be repaid, an independent political and judicial system (Dutch/British vs Spanish/French). Risk was reduced with limited liability joint-stock companies (VOC, EIC).
• Capital drove (political) history: European imperialism was, in turn, more efficiently supported by a capitalist system (vs. China, Persia)
• Capitalism became prescriptive/an ethic.

17. The Wheels of Industry

• But… can the economic pie grow indefinitely?
• Fallacy of Malthusian catastrophe; our ability to convert “an ocean of energy” after psychological breakthrough in application of steam (extraction) technology to all spheres
• Resultant explosion of human productivity. IR was “Second Agricultural Revolution”, freeing up labour to produce other goods and services
• Harari warns that IR methods have led to the mechanization of plants and animals (c.f. slaves during colonialism) and indifference.
• Resulted in supply >> demand; called for new ethic of consumerism. This was reconciled with capitalism in the form of the rich being capitalist and the poor, the consumers (“division of labour”). This is revolutionary in that it is easily accepted and practiced by most people.

18. A Permanent Revolution

• IR resulted in ecological degradation (global warming, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, rising sea levels). This is not the same as resource scarcity (provided by the “ocean of energy”)
• IR resulted in many societal upheavals. E.g. From local time to synchronized time as a template of all human activity
• Most momentous is the collapse of the family and local community, replaced by the state and the market:

1. Tripartite arrangement between individual, state and markets reflects the power of culture over evolution (into social animals)
2. Supported by the notion of individualism, lessening the dependence on family
3. However, it comes at the cost of alienation and emotional solitude.
4. Substituted with intersubjective reality of “imagined communities” of the nation (state) and consumer tribe (market), e.g. Madonna fans. This is different because we don’t need to know everyone in the group; we are united by belief/interests.

• A change in the fundamental social order from inflexible and eternal to constant change (“permanent flux”)
• History is progressing positively.

1. Decline in war (status quo of peace); retreat of colonialism/imperialism
2. Positive feedback look of mutually-assured destruction, pacifism, benefits of peace and costs of war.

• However, Harari also acknowledges that we cannot tell if the current peace is an aberration or part of a longer historical trend. It is a matter of timing. Instead, we can consider ourselves “on the threshold of both heaven and hell”.

19. And Then They Lived Happily Ever After

• History seldom asks if we are happier. Harari suggests it is important because it influences ideologies and policies. Interesting research subject of history
• Various views on history and happiness:

1. Progressive account: Increase in capabilities reduces sufferings and fulfil goals, increasing happiness
2. “Regressive” account: Reverse correlation because power corrupts; a “cold mechanistic world” cannot satisfy our “inherent inclinations and instincts”
3. “Middle road”: We have used our capabilities more wisely.

• But these views are either dogmatic, or based on a small sample size. It is too early to know (we may have sown the seeds of future ecological destruction)
• Research in happiness — key is the application of data methods to reach conclusions

1. How to measure happiness? (Philosophy of happiness): Subjective well-being. We also need to avoid thinking from our current perspective to judge previous generations
2. Potential Findings:

• “Improvement in material conditions… offset by the collapse of family and community”
• “[Happiness] depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations” → our modern exposure to ideals via mass media and advertising is skewing our expectations.

• What is happiness?

1. The biochemical view: History (external stimuli) is of minor importance; what good was history? The only significant historical development is science and technology to biochemically increase happiness.
2. The meaningfulness view: Does not favour modernity; happiness is synchronizing personal “delusions” of meaning with prevailing collective delusions
3. Harari advocates the “know thyself” approach — not to identify happiness with feelings, but self-understanding

• Most history does not focus on happiness and suffering; the “biggest lacuna in our understanding of history [that] we better start filling”.

20. The End of Homo sapiens

• We are now beginning to transcend physical, chemical and biological limits with intelligent design.
• The capability of introducing completely new characteristics means that SR is not just a historical revolution, but a biological revolution. Natural selection could be replaced by intelligent design via

1. Biological engineering: gene editing
2. Cyborg (organic-inorganic hybrid) engineering: bionics
3. Inorganic life engineering

• There seems to be no insurmountable technical barrier. While ethical and political objections can slow down progress, it cannot stop it, especially given the stakes and massive benefits.
• We are approaching a new “singularity” where all concepts that give meaning — me, you, gender, love, hate — will become irrelevant. Anything happening beyond that point is meaningless. These fundamental transformations in human consciousness and identity mean we could “no longer Homo sapiens”
• We need to ask what we want to become (or want to want). Even so, progress is not stoppable. We can influence the direction scientists are taking.