I imagine writing a quality history book must be tedious and difficult.  Besides the exhaustive research required to sift through causalities and piece together arbitrary narratives, history books need scope.  An excess of facts and figures can take away from the human plot - after all, history is a story about us.  Taking on too many storylines can sacrifice the central theme.  Readers can be left wondering what the journey was all about.  On the flip-side, if the story is overly broad or short, important characters and details are lost.  Inadequate or misleading impressions on events and people may leave the reader wanting more, or feeling cheated.  No doubt, every author brings their own preconceptions to historic episodes.  There is no escape from subjectivity even among the most critical investigators.  Nonetheless, there is preferred approach. 

 

A proper scope, to me, is comprehensive, focused, and balanced.  When I read a quality history book that gets the scope correct, I'm left with a sense of awe.  I can't help but feel a genuine admiration for authors that transcribe a myriad of past events into a coherent, engaging thematic story.  These authors take us on a journey through disparate chronicles, and with their sheer foresight and intellect unite ideas, characters, and trajectories.  Good writing is "telepathy", in the words of Stephen King.  Good history transforms us.  Our foresight and intellect are refined.  I think we become better people.

 

How does Yuval Noah Harari's worldwide bestseller Sapiens compare to some of the great histories?  If we accept the countless reviews alone, as a basis, then Sapiens may well be one of the greatest history books of the last 20 years.  But is it?  Are reviews misleading?  Who is reading this book, precisely?  Is this book a product of clever marketing, or perhaps an anomaly hit that somehow gained the momentum to line every airport bookstore from Seattle to Shanghai?

 

After breezing through the 400 plus pages of Harari's seminal work, I found myself scratching my head a little bit.  My first question upon finishing:  What is all the hype about?  I've read much better history books about different subjects that have garnered a mere fraction of the reach.  Maybe I felt a little cheated by the scope.  The central theme of the book is audacious by any stretch.  How can one possibly condense the history of humans into a little over 400 pages and really deliver a penetrating, insightful story?  He certainly tries.  

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We begin Sapiens with an overview of the migrations and culture of ancient modern humans.  According to Harari, we share 1 - 4% DNA with Neanderthals.  Also of interest, Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians share an even higher percentage, roughly 6%, of DNA with the mysterious Denisovan people.  This brings up interesting questions as to how far modern Homo sapiens have strayed from these more ancient human branches genetically.  If we were, or still are, able to mate with Neanderthals and Denisovans, then they clearly weren't a different species like horses and donkeys - which can mate but produce infertile offspring.  Perhaps, some offspring were infertile, and some weren't, when ancient Homo sapiens mated with these older, ancient humans.  The sub-species were on the brink of speciation.  This isn't hard to believe when we glance at modern dogs.  They are able to mate and produce fertile offspring, yet, anyone observing a toy Maltese and an Alaskan Malamute side-by-side would be surprised to learn this fact. 

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Homo sapiens eventually become the dominant sub-species of human across the globe, somehow out-competing other humans.  Although genetic mixing must have happened to some degree with other human sub-species, (I have more than 80% Neanderthal DNA than the average person), out-breeding other humans is only a part of the story - perhaps a small one.  A popular explanation for our eventual dominance in the primitive human "competition" lies within our social development.  Although Neanderthals, (and likely Denisovans), had larger brains by absolute mass as Homo sapiens, the evidence suggests that sapiens out-competed these other sub-species because of their social coordination that resulted in more efficient hunting strategies, migration patterns, and likely, more effective warfare.  The complete picture isn't known, however, since it's also clear that sapiens share common genetics.  A combination of out-competing, climate change, and some interbreeding is probably a reasonable summary of the overall early sapien impact, and ultimate dominance over other humans.

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Another important innovation produced by our ancient ancestors was, in the words of Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth".  In hunter-gatherer societies, mythologies oriented bands around a common existential interpretation.  It's difficult to say, exactly, when our more imaginative facilities arose which produced the early myths.  It was, perhaps, an accident of evolution.  One idea is that with the rapid growth of human brains from the consumption of high protein and high fat diets, naturally our imagination developed in tandem.  This outpouring was apparently facilitated by cooking animal flesh with fire which allowed for much less energy and time needed for protein and fat digestion.  This in turn resulted in more leisure time to converse, tell stories, and contemplate the mysteries of nature.  Imagine lying around a fire looking up to the Milky Way at night with a belly full of wild game.  No city light pollution or other distractions produced a tonifying effect on the sympathetic nervous system of ancient peoples, leaving their relaxed minds to drift into visions and imagination.

 

Harari adds that the diversity of ancient bands and tribes was likely immense.  This isn't the first time I've heard this argument presented forth by an author discussing prehistory.  Here, he argues that the diverse cultures currently around the world are likely carryover byproducts of hunter-gatherer societies, rather than later impositions by agriculturalists.  If anything, the agricultural revolution stifled or destroyed much of the ancient cultures of these bands, or replaced them with centralized amalgamations of cultures revolving around growing cycles and seasons. 

 

With this agriculture revolution came the contraction of space and the expansion of time.  Surely, oral traditions and histories were a part of hunter-gatherer bands, but with agricultural surpluses came specialization, writing, future planning and logistics, and the recording of certain histories.  Time stretched forward and backwards as the spaces people occupied and moved within, shrank. 

 

Socially, ancient cultures were different too.  In hunter-gatherer bands, the idea of private property, money, and individualism, were likely concepts that had no meaning.  In agricultural societies specialization facilitated skill development, class hierarchies, and probably a sense of individual worth - or at least class worth with respect to other classes.  Personal space was still a work-in-progress. 

 

In medieval times, for example, many youth slept in large halls with other youth, growing up as a collective.  Privacy and personal property were concepts with little meaning.  A person's worth resided in relationship to their class, rather than who they were as an individual.  Although this idea is still common in place like India with their caste system, in the U.S. people are viewed more in terms of their individual career, wealth, and accomplishments.         

 

From here Harari changes emphasis and discusses the social issues in ancient times.  His approach seems at times historically relativistic, "History proceeds from one junction to the next, choosing for some mysterious reason to follow first this path, then another.  Around 1500 AD, history made its most momentous choice, changing not only the fate of humankind, but arguably the fate of all life on earth.  We call it the Scientific Revolution.  It began in western Europe, a large peninsula on the western tip of Afro-Asia, which up till then played no important role in history.  Why did the Scientific Revolution begin there of all places, and not in China or India?  Why did it begin at the midpoint of the second millennium AD rather than two centuries before or three centuries later?  We don't know.  Scholars have proposed dozens of theories, but none of them is particularly convincing."  He suggest the outcomes were likely a matter of random accidents that allowed one culture its day in the sun over another, (no mention of anything related Diamond's rather convincing theory on "geographic determinism", or favorable climate conditions, or of the religious and political conditions that inspired movements like the Enlightenment).  Sure, we can cop-out and say everything that ever happened was a random accident, but it doesn't do anyone any favors in search of fleshed-out explanations on historic origins and patterns.  

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In particular, on ancient social issues,  he discusses women's issues.  However, here he seems to change ideology, moving away from a kind of relativism.  Instead, he puts on a "gender studies" hat to describe the role of women in relationship to a historic unjust patriarchy.  First, he glosses over the nature of hierarchies, which in his words, "...serve an important function.  They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted."  No mention, in these passages, on how women fit into, or regulate the hierarchies or how they evolved out of hunter-gatherer bands.  Next, he concedes a lack of biological certainty on sexes, "Some of the cultural, legal and political disparities between men and women reflect the obvious biological differences between the sexes.  Childbearing has always been women's job, because men don't have wombs.  Yet around this hard universal kernel, every society accumulated layer upon layer of cultural ideas and norms that have little do with biology.  Societies associate a host of attributes with masculinity and femininity that, for the most part, lack a firm biological basis."  Later, he continues with, "Patriarchy has been the norm in almost all agricultural and industrial societies.  It has tenaciously weathered political upheavals, social revolutions and economic transformations...Egypt was governed by pharaonic law, Greek law, Roman law, Muslim law, Ottoman law and British law - and they all discriminated against people who were not 'real men'."  Following these points, he discusses possible explanations why men historically discriminated against women in ancient societies.  Was it muscle power?  Male aggression?  Patriarchal genes?  For Harari, none of these explanations are convincing.  Nowhere in these passages is there any mention of lack of birth control, sanitation, modern medicine, risks during childbirth, or tampons.  He misses his chance to discuss what evolutionary biologists have already inferred - child rearing for women historically was difficult, long, and often deadly (much riskier than today).  In hunter-gatherer times, with less consistent nutrition, women breast-fed at least twice as long as today, or longer, (2-3 years).  The transition to a high grain diet for peasants during the agricultural shift likely complicated matters for women.  Poor nutrition during and leading up to pregnancy can result in a host of issues, (premature birth, low birth weight and child disabilities, narrow hips for women, kidney disorders exasperated by carrying/birthing children etc.).  In other words, complications from birth can lead to death, or permanent disability.  Without birth control, women became pregnant more easily and more frequently.  These common issues (more common relative to today) had, in my opinion, a major impact on the roles women were able to play in ancient societies.  Is it any surprise that today with modern medicine, birth control, sanitation, and tampons, women have gone through multiple revolutions and now enjoy a dominant majority in many respectable career fields?  It's not a surprise to me.  I don't know if I can say the same for Harari, who seems bewildered by the historic difference in gender roles.  To add, just because women didn't write the histories, run the cities and countries, or fight the wars, doesn't mean they weren't influential.  The lack of evidence doesn't equate to lack of importance.  Women were likely instrumental in many major wars, political decisions, ruler ascendancies, and innovations.  Without women, societies crumble and die, and men have nothing and nowhere to go.  In other words, women, and the children they reared, meant everything.   

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In later chapters, Harari glosses over other major topics with digestible brevity.  Some of points that stood out to me: 

 

• "The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance.  Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods.  Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'."  I'm somewhat of an advocate of polytheism, so I want to agree here.  Polytheism serves us a polarity or constellation of archetypes that allows for orientation around different principles depending on circumstances.  It's a compromise between moral relativism and absolutism - a feature of binary faiths.  In contrast, I could just as easily argue that polytheism encourages followers to justify anything and everything they do in view of the ever rotating gods and their elastic whims, ('I just punched a dude for no reason.  Oh, that was just the god Ares taking control of my right hand.  Not my fault, ' etc.)
   

• "While war became less profitable, peace became more lucrative than ever.  In traditional agricultural economies long-distance trade and foreign investment were sideshows.  Consequently, peace brought little profit, aside from avoiding the costs of war.  If, say, in 1400 England and France were at peace, the French did not have to pay heavy taxes and to suffer destructive English invasions, but otherwise it did not benefit their wallets.  In modern capitalist economies, foreign trade and investments have become all-important.  Peace therefore brings unique dividends."  This is an idea I can get behind.  The more our world becomes interconnected, the more we rely on each other for resources and the maintenance of our living standards.  A rising tide raises all boats.  Next stop, Mars, (or the Venusian atmosphere!)

   

Harari's ambitious and hugely popular story on humans captures many of the major movements and trends throughout our tumultuous history.  I found myself both appreciating the effort and enjoying the rate I was able to read through the story, (rather fast).  At the same time, I found myself a bit frustrated.  Harari glosses over many topics that deserved far more depth, and writes on some topics more than necessary.  It's hard to say how many philosophical "hats" Harari rotated while writing his story.  I didn't feel like a consistent voice was narrating.  Maybe this was intentional, but it was also a little confusing and uneven.  I don't know how Harari actually feels about many of his topics.  Taking an objective stance is certainly laudable, and no doubt many authors writing history take this approach - but his stances throughout the book weren't all objective.  He infuses his opinion with the story at different junctures.  Yet, his opinionated comments lack an overarching perspective.  At times they contradict earlier perspectives.  How does he really feel about human history?  I won't attempt a guess.  What I can say:  His opinions are all over the place, just like his story on humans.

 

 

 

Summary:  Harari's Sapiens reads like an extended National Geographic article for better and worse.  The brevity of the book is offset by an inconsistent voice and a glossing over of crucial topics.  Overrated.         

 

Rating:  6.0

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-E.B.

2019-2-20