Sapiens

A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari

This is one space I think 'brief' gets redefined.

What Yuval Harari does here is touch evolution from way way way back, and not as paleontology or archaeology or sociology.....but with Sapiens as center. It's an amazing macro level view of the journey.....how we've reached where we've reached. 

I heard that Harari did ten years of vipassana, a full month each year, before he wrote this book. Don't know how true or exaggerated that is, but I can clearly see why that would fit. Just the quantum and diversity of information that he has put together to create this tome, would need that kind of mind space.

The first two pages is the timeline, starting from 13.5 billion years ago when matter and energy appeared, down to 200 years ago of the Industrial Revolution, 50 years ago of the Scientific Revolution....onto the present.

I think I took a half hour or maybe even two days to just process those first two pages. It's the feeling you get when you're just stepping into the sanctum sanctorium of an old large church, an over whelming feeling that just takes you over. (I say church and not temple, because architecturally churches do that best)

One concept that seems to underlay it all is of the cognitive revolution, wherein man, rather Sapien created this reality or construct in shared imagination, which paves the way for each future evolution. And in that he brings out how so many constructs we accept as real are but creations from man's need for power and dominance at one end, and universality and convergence at another.......be it the economic system, system of caste, the institution of marriage, or even God.

While he's writing in full earnest about evolution of the Sapiens and the structures surrounding it, and you are engrossed in processing the complexity of the compression, there's humor that laces many an observation.......I had many a laugh aloud moment, especially as he inches closer home.

The chapter on the scientific revolution was electrifying in the connection and coherence he drew through it all. Columbus and Megallan and Amerigo Verpucci sprang alive from the ghosts of history text books to tell a tale of adventure and grit. Facets like cartographers creating maps with empty spaces, with an invitation to explorers to fill in was like out of a fascinating Sci-Fi novel....mind blowing stuff.

The Industrial revolution caught my fancy like a thriller novel, I was walking around with the book in my hand, through breakfast, lunch and dinner. Funny thing is there was nothing new. Yet when you read about something as simple as invention of electricity, how it changed lives, how in Mary Poppins even as late as in 1930 they yet used gas based street lamps, a lot of dots connect to create a wondrous story.

And those absolutely hilarious cultural quirks; like when aluminium was discovered, and how for decades it was more expensive than gold. In the 1860s Emperor Napolean commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with gold knives and forks.

That said, I did find places in the book which seemed a tad opinionated, and perhaps didn't fit perfectly into the whole. For instance he seems to suggest that the shift from 'Hunters-Gatherers' to the Agricultural Revolution was detrimental to the Sapiens growth, he says that repeatedly, and then later in the book we have him say that the flux in human cultures does have a direction... it is moving towards unification.

How then can an agricultural revolution be not part of a unification direction. Felt like an aberration.

Anyways, that was one such thought.

In terms of pushing understanding of some seemingly unanswerable questions, the perspective is truly enabling...... and I'd say it's one of those direction changing books, where every once in a while you get to step back and reassess, and it's impossible to get the kind of vantage he provides in one place in 480 pages. Just for that, it's such a big wow !

It's not an easy read....  takes a lot of processing..........but for those up to it, totally worthwhile !