Sapiens Book Review

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Only if my passport kept records of all the places I’ve travelled in this book, I would have had to renew it everyday. 

Sapiens by Yual Noah Harari isn’t just a book but an entire travelogue starting a few million years back and bringing you to present. From the time when we were foragers to the time we decided to supersede God. 


“6 million years ago, a female ape gave birth to two daughters, one became the ancestor of all chimpanzees and the other is our grandmother.” Out so many human species that came into existence, it was only us, sapiens, that made it till date, at least according to replacement theory. 


We were different since the beginning. While our evolution was in line with other species our mind was far ahead than anyone. This was cognitive revolution that makes the first part of the book followed by agricultural revolution that made our ancient foragers- farmers. The third part of the book talks about the unification of mankind. This might seem bizarre because of our hindsight fallacy, but that’s true. Last part is about scientific revolution, the thing that made us deadly. 


The content is written in a way that could be understood well. At some point it feels to get quite heavy, because it spins us around centuries and kingdoms at a time. Also we might disagree with the author at some instances maybe for the way he has said agricultural revolution to be the greatest fraud in history or the existence of God to be a shared myth. Whereas there were some things that were convinced easily like the ‘imagined order’ and the fact that it’s only the human language that can speak fantasy. 


One thing is for sure that India has got a special place in the global history, be it giving Buddhism to the world or belief in polytheism, trade, scholars, and even science. On the other hand India also played its part in showing how justice didn’t exist in past by its caste system. Every civilisation have had both the sides. 


The question he asks at the end is “Are we happy?” The answer to this might differ today but centuries down the line there would be just one conclusion to be drawn! 


Sapiens is a lot of question and a lot of insights. Do give it a read and if you don’t agree with it, least enjoy it as a science fiction ;)

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