Sapiens

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

A summary of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2015. The book, focusing on Homo sapiens, surveys the history of humankind, starting from the Stone Age and going up to the twenty-first century. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences.

The book has gathered mixed reviews. While it was positively received by the general public, scholars with relevant subject matter expertise have been very critical of its scientific and historical claims.

Harari's work situates its account of human history within a framework: he sees the natural sciences as setting the limits of possibility for human activity and sees the social sciences as shaping what happens within those bounds. The academic discipline of history is the account of cultural change.

Harari surveys the history of humankind in the Stone Age up to the twenty-first century, focusing on Homo sapiens. He divides the history of Sapiens into four major parts:

The Cognitive Revolution (c. 70,000 BCE, when imagination evolved in Sapiens).

The Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE, the development of agriculture).

The unification of humankind (c. 34 CE, the gradual consolidation of human political organizations towards one global empire).

The Scientific Revolution (c. 1543 CE, the emergence of objective science).

Harari's main argument is that Sapiens came to dominate the world because it is the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. He argues that prehistoric Sapiens were a key cause of the extinction of other human species such as the Neanderthals and numerous other megafauna. He further argues that the ability of Sapiens to cooperate in large numbers arises from its unique capacity to believe in things existing purely in the imagination, such as gods, nations, money, and human rights. He argues that these beliefs give rise to discrimination – whether that be racial, sexual or political and it is potentially impossible to have a completely unbiased society. Harari claims that all large-scale human cooperation systems – including religions, political structures, trade networks, and legal institutions – owe their emergence to Sapiens' distinctive cognitive capacity for fiction. Accordingly, Harari regards money as a system of mutual trust and sees political and economic systems as more or less identical with religions.

Content:

THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION

1. AN ANIMAL OF NO SIGNIFICANCE

2. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

3. A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ADAM AND EVE

4. THE FLOOD

THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

5. HISTORY’S BIGGEST FRAUD

6. BUILDING PYRAMIDS

7. MEMORY OVERLOAD

8. THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN HISTORY

THE UNIFICATION OF HUMANKIND

9. THE ARROW OF HISTORY

10. THE SCENT OF MONEY

11. IMPERIAL VISIONS

12. THE LAW OF RELIGION

13. THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

14. THE DISCOVERY OF IGNORANCE

15. THE MARRIAGE OF SCIENCE AND EMPIRE

16. THE CAPITALIST CREED

17. THE WHEELS OF INDUSTRY

18. A PERMANENT REVOLUTION

19. AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER

20. THE END OF HOMO SAPIENS