BOOK SUMMARY: SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Paperback

Author: Yuval Noah Harari 

Print length: 512 pages

Publisher: Penguin Random House

The book starts with a brief note in which author urges from all of us to believe, to question about the world, to make a link between old development and the new concerns, and we should not fear to raise debatable issues.

All the element of this book roams around three revolutions with which most of the sapiens and their fellow affected a great. These three revolutions connects the history, first one is cognitive revolution which started about 70,000 years ago; it helped humans to cooperate and connect with people on large groups. Second one is agricultural revolution which started 12,000 years ago; it made humans to wander for fertile land. Third one is scientific revolution which started 500 years ago; it helped humans to grow and make human life easy from centuries.

The evolution of sapiens started first in the East Africa about 5 million years ago from the old genus called Australopithecus. But due to some worries some of them travelled to settle in North Africa, Europe and Asia. Some of them faced trouble to live in snowy forest in northern Europe and some in the steaming jungles of Indonesia.

The humans in Europe and western Asia characterized as homo Neanderthals by the scientists. The population living in Asia is characterized as Homo erectus. These sapiens travelled all over the world in search of food and shelter.

Now people think of large human brain of our earlier beings, the use of tools superior learning abilities and different social structure are huge advantages, these things made humankind most powerful on earth. But these human took this advantage for only a limited period. The human around 1,000,000 years ago had the same big brain, sharp stone tools but they had always feared of predators. This fear did not allow them to hunt large species. They ate leaves, insects, small animals, or the flesh leftover by carnivores.

The time came to use fire. Around 8 million years ago with the invention of fire, humans became dependent on fire for light and to keep themselves warm. Fire also used as a tool to fight with lions. The humans used fire to cook the food they could not eat raw. Before the invention of fire, they had to chew their raw food for hours.

Some of the scholars did research on the internal structure of brains of these humans. They found it different from ours brain. Though both looked similar but their abilities, learning, remembering and communicating were very low to ours. They would feel difficulties if we tried to teach them English, religious belief or the history.

In this book we also read about the prehistoric sapiens, they were the animals that caused the extinction of other human beings, which existed before, like Neanderthals and other mega fauna.

In 1775 India and China both drove to gain 66 per cent of world GDP. The British, French and Spanish were very low compared to India and China.

These two countries had a wide exploration and had a place for capitalists. This exploration ended in the new land full of resources, and most of the explorer used their whole power and capital to grab this new land and also grab the resources available there.

This exploration also leads to search America, Australia and many more continents. And the world map was created.

If we talk about modern superpower of the world, it also created a way for explorers. It may be information technology, space or biotech. America still provides millions and billions for research, technology and space for exploration, even in the time of wars and when less finance was available. This is the main reason most of the American companies (Google and Amazon) have worldwide footprints.

While some of the companies still do not believe in such exploration and getting the resources beyond its limit and that is the reason of their failure sooner or later.

The book also explains about the unification of humans and associated things. For most of the people gossiping and believing in fiction may be irrelevant, but these things helped humans to make big communities, made us tie in a social and co operational relationship. These things also help us to understand human nature and to fight with stress.

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