Summary of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind By Yuval Noah Harari

By BOOK ADDICT

Summary of Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind: By Yuval Noah Harari | Book Summary | Book Addict

From where did the world appear?

Is the creation story true?

 

Why is Man the way he is?

 

Were there men, before you and I?

 

Would there be other species after you and me?

 

Religion & Politics: what is their origin? And why do they rule our world so strongly?

 

Oh well! You might be in for a shocker! If you were told today that you come from a lineage of animals, and probably have some apes and chimpanzees as long-lost cousins, what would you think? If you knew that the creation story was just make-believe invented to control your world, what would you say? What if you were told that your species would one day come to an end?

 

All of these and many more are the topics explored in “SAPIENS.”

 

In the book ”Sapiens”, Yuval Noah Harari discusses all you need to know about who you are and where you come from, and debunks the many myths that have lived with us until now.

 

This book contains a comprehensive, well detailed summary and key takeaways of the original book by Yuval Noah Harari. It summarizes the book in detail, to help people effectively understand, articulate and imbibe the original work by Noah. This book is not meant to replace the original book but to serve as a companion to it.

Contained is an

Executive Summary of the original book

Key Points of each chapter and

Brief chapter-by-chapter summaries

• Language: English
• Publisher: DAVID READ
• Release date: Jan 23, 2019

Book preview

Takeaways:

Executive Summary

Oh well! You might be in for a shocker! If you were told today that you come from a lineage of animals, and probably have some apes and chimpanzees as long-lost cousins, what would you think? If you knew that the creation story was just make-believe invented to control your world, what would you say? What if you were told that your species would one day come to an end?

All of these and many more are the topics explored in SAPIENS.

In this book, Yuval Noah Harari discusses all you need to know about who you are and where you come from, and debunks the many myths that have lived with us until now. By taking you back in time, Harari helps you connect with the truth- the actual truth that many have refused to accept over the years!

Prepare for a mind-blowing, enlightening and educative read as you journey through the pages of Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind.

PART ONE: THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION

Chapter 1: An Animal of No Significance

Key Takeaways:

The world came to be from the Big Bang

Biology came into existence on planet earth

Humans existed before history began

You are a Homo Sapien

Billions of years back, the universe came to be. This formation known as the Big bang consists of three essential constituents: Physics, chemistry, and biology.  Physics concerns itself with a tale of features such as matter, energy, time and space. Some years after the emergence of these features, matter, and energy began to merge into complex structures. These structures are called atoms, and molecules. Atoms and molecules form the crux of the chemistry tale. Biology was birthed about 3.8 billion years back on a certain planet popularly called earth. On earth, molecules again merged, creating organisms. Hence, biology tells the story of organisms.

Years after, on planet earth, organisms of the Homo sapiens species began creating larger arrangements known as cultures. In line with this, the development of these cultures forms what is known as history. History is made up of three major landmarks: The cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution. The latter may become a pathway onto something else entirely, putting an end to history.

Before the existence of history, there were humans. Animals who seemed like humans of this generation surfaced for the first time 2.5 million years back. But for a long time, they failed to appear any different from the tons of other organisms with whom they occupied the same environment. About 2 million years back, you just may have seen a setting similar to what is obtainable today- a complete human society, with mothers, children, fathers and youths going about their normal activities. These ancient humans did play, love, make friends with one another and so much more. Yet, there was nothing extraordinary about that because just as they did, chimpanzees, baboons and a host of other animals did the same.  As at then, humans could not fathom the great feats that their descendants would one day come to achieve. Humans before the advent of history were just a bunch of unimportant animals, who were no different, nor had any consequence on their world than did animals.

According to biologists, if a certain animal has intercourse with another animal, they are classified as belonging to the same species, irrespective of the fact that they may be entirely different animals. For example, a bulldog and a spaniel. Both look physically different from one another, yet belong to the same species. When species are birthed from an ancestor common to them, they are called genus, the plural form being genera.  Organisms are often identified with a genus which is closely followed by the organism’s species. This is seen in the case of the Lion which is called Panthera Leo- the Leo species belonging to the Panthera genus. Humans are Homo sapiens, i.e., the sapiens species belonging to the homo (man) genus.

Genera, plural form of genus, are clustered together to form families. Such families include cats, dogs, and elephants. Family members trace their heredity back to an ancestor. For example, all cats (including lions) come from a mutual catlike ancestor who lived about 25 million years ago. Like cats, humans, who are homo sapiens belong to a family. For a long time, however, humans chose to deny this fact, setting ourselves apart from animals, as people without family members. That’s untrue. Humans are from a large family of apes, with our relations being animals such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Six million years ago, a female ape birthed two daughters. One is the ancestor of all chimpanzees today. The other brought forth the human race!  This is not all. As humans, we not only have a whole long lot of archaic, uncivilized and perhaps uncultured cousins, we equally had siblings- male and female alike. We assume we are the only human species there ever has been, yeah? The truth is, there existed lots of other species besides us, Homo sapiens. It might interest you to know that sooner than we expect, we might have to deal with humans who do not belong to the sapiens species.

Humans, for the first time, evolved in East Africa, from a lineage of apes 2 million years ago. These uncivilized, ancient men and women left to settle in some parts of North Africa, Asia, and Europe. Owing to the geographical and environmental factors they met within the different choices of places to settle, they evolved differently too, thus birthing several species of humans. Those in Western Asia and Europe evolved into Homo neanderthalensis. Eastern Asia had Homo Erectus while Indonesia had Homo Soloensis. Somewhere in Indonesia, humans gradually became dwarfs, following an environmental condition which resulted in the loss of lives of the much bigger folks.

Over

Reviews for Summary of Sapiens

[Brooke Lindquist · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read a good amount of the original, and this is a butchered, elementary version.