Abstract: Sapiens – Uma breve história da humanidade, by Yuval Noah Harari, published in 2020 by Companhia das Letras publisher, explores the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions that shaped humanity. With 471 pages, Harari, an Israeli historian, offers a biological, social and behavioral perspective of the human species.
Keywords: History of humanity, revolution, and sapiens.
Sapiens — uma breve história da humanidade was originally released in 2011 in Israel, but would soon become an international work, being translated into more than forty countries and recommended by names such as Barack Obama, Bill Gates, actress Natalie Portman, the philosopher Brazilian Leandro Karnal, among others. In Brazil it was translated into its first edition by Jorio Dauster and released by Companhia das Letras in 2020. The work has 4 parts with 20 chapters distributed in 471 pages. Although without an introduction text, the author presents us with three revolutions of our species that, according to him, shaped the course of our history. They are: Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolution. Let us consider, therefore, that the purpose of the book is to narrate these revolutions and their consequences for living beings.
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian born in 1976. It is PH.D in History from the University of Oxford and a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It has a line of research directed to the relationship between biology, concept of justice and social relations with the timeline of human history. In addition to the international sapiens phenomenon – a brief history of humanity, Harari wrote the sequences “Homo Deus – a brief history of tomorrow” and also “21 lessons for the 21st century.” In 2012, he received the Polonsky Award for creativity and originality in humanistic disciplines.
In the first part, which comprises chapters from 1 to 4, the work makes a historical reading of the species in their biological, social and behavioral characteristics and proposing a reflection on the directions that homo sapiens have taken, from the principle that the sapiens They probably lived with other species of humans. While showing features that made us stand out from other species, such as the ability to plan and organize us, Sapiens explains that our ancestors were already able to produce fiction, to believe in the imagination, whether for their own fun as telling stories, creating gods, unit a group by ideal. He exemplifies that a Neanderthal, though stronger and also with a larger brain in his individuality, would not be able to defeat a group of sapiens for his own as he is short in the ability to plan.
This first part, called the cognitive revolution, suggests that sapiens are responsible for the extinction of other human species, pointing to the coincidence that each region that homo sapiens arrive, leave traces of destruction, or by an unfortunate chance, species reduce Their numbers and tend to disappear, without discarding the possibility that themselves have devised these extinctions: “Maybe that’s exactly why our ancestors eliminated the Neanderthals. They were too similar to ignore themselves, but different to without tolerated ”(p.26). The author underlies the impact of cognitive revolution, pointing to the fact that still in time – between 70 and 12,000 years ago – skilled collecting hunters, there was no significant change in our DNA, but our advance was so fast that the other species was of animals did not have time to adapt. This stage of the book is marked about our trail in the world from the point of view of reasoning and what we did with this power.
In chapters from 5 to 8, regarding the part of the Agricultural Revolution, the author shows that upon arriving in the Middle East 70,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens spent the next 50,000 years thriving in that following region without dedicating themselves to agriculture and there are More than 9,000 years actually cultivated grains while the nomadic life of the hunter-collar was left. Here the author makes a relationship between the cultivation of the fields, eating habits, increased demographic indices, child mortality linked to the fact that children in settlements feed less on breast milk, impacts on the body of sapiens – unnatural
These conditions in settlements require more food, more care, more demand. Thus, it is possible to understand that the sapiens now also needed to worry about saving and storing food. The next crop plans in search of economic-alimentary security. Here there was already a problem of distribution, leaders, elites, political organizations, surplus, concentration of resources and inequality. For Harari, “the story is what some people did while all the others were plowing fields and carrying buckets of water” (p.116). In this part of the book, Harari adds that other factors responsible for the construction of a large group of Homo Sapiens are based on social buildings. This includes not only systems, but beliefs, gender in its discussion about natural and unnatural.
In the part of the Scientific Revolution, which comprises chapters from 14 to 20, the work makes a climb in the process that questions move the growing scientific: the need not to accept to stagnate in current knowledge. At this stage of the work, words such as science, resources, power, capital, market and meaning of life gain space.
Here the author scains the growing scientific, its impacts and makes projections for a future in which technology can guarantee us longevity and immortality, but also, as gods – taking other animals as a parameter of power – we can also disappear. Our greatest power is the cause of our end. We are many, we can very much, we want too much, but we do not know what we want and we are always dissatisfied.
Realistic scenarios remain that limit global warming to 1.5ºC | Photo: Marek Piwnicki/Unsplash/Globo.com
The author makes an analysis through what he called the scientific revolution feedback cycle in which scientific research needs resources provided by those who have power. Funding research, these agents provide them with advances and discoveries that give them even more advantages to having more power and thus restarts the cycle. In short, governments and entities finance research to obtain and develop new technologies for their own benefit.
The work is indeed inviting for reflections of origins, development and survival as a species, as well as a futuristic projection based on this walk. However, it can be seen that during this literary trip, the author unites proven historical information with propositions that have a value of “already thought if it was like this?” That is, it mixes these two argumentative strategies a lot. As the construction is done with care and richness of detail, this can give a sense of official to the whole set, which for a lay reader in history is harmful. Moreover, at times, Harari makes it clear that the theory he is addressing is not accepted by a substantial portion of researchers, but does so soon after “selling it” during reading. Finally, having an introduction that is beyond a temporal table and a conclusion that is not a pessimistic retrospective, – and clearer than a teaser for the author’s next futuristic book – would give the work the chord that seems to be missing to be finished a song.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, the book is a walk in the recent moments of the Cenozoic era, humanity being the most recent but so significant event from the point of view of the historical record, the biological and cultural inheritances of our ancestors. The perception is that we are – albeit powerful – animals, alone as species, but nothing good coexistence with other animals. In this experience, joining a prehistoric journey with a futuristic projection, it may be possible to feel a semantic game that gives vent to a pleasant and just question: a brief history of humanity is so briefly being told, or the author suggests That our story here, while species will be brief?
Considering that the objective of the work was to show the three proposed revolutions and their impact on the course of human history, the book makes an excellent timeline, building arguments and grounds of the narrated moments, we will give here as fulfilled its goal. In the work the author builds the narrative about the human being, Homo sapiens from a perspective of insignificant animal, with physical weaknesses and physical strength below another – or other – species of humans with which he lived and closes as a god Irresponsible and dissatisfied, but so powerful. In each part the reader may reflect and feel the advance as a species and its consequences as they occur, receiving the futuristic perspective without impact because the steps were contemplated for this ideal construction. It is a work suitable for history students, enthusiasts of knowledge of origins of humanity, theologians and politicians.
Summary ofSapiens: uma breve história da humanidade
I: A Revolução cognitiva
1. Um animal insignificante
2. A árvore do conhecimento
3. Um dia na vida de Adão e Eva
4. O dilúvio
II: A Revolução agrícola
5. A maior fraude da história
6. Construindo Pirâmides
7. Sobrecarga da Memória
8. Não há justiça na história
III: A unificação da Humanidade
9. A seta da história
10. O cheiro do dinheiro
11. Visões Imperiais
12. A Lei da religião
13. O segredo do sucesso
IV. A Revolução científica
14. A descoberta da ignorância
15. O casamento da ciência com o império
16. A fé capitalista
17. As engrenagens da indústria
18. Uma revolução permanente
19. E viveram felizes para sempre
20. O fim do Homo Sapiens
Epílogo: O animal que se tornou um Deus
Agradecimentos
Notas
Créditos das imagens
Índice remissivo
Reviewer
Helber Vieira Durães is a professor of Geography, professor of extensionists in Civil Engineering at FAI – Faculdade Irecê, graduated in Architecture and Urbanism at Unifacisa (2016), specialist in structures and foundations by Faculdade Anhanguera (2020) Special student of Master in Estudos Africanos, Povos Indígenas e Cultura Negra ( PPGEAFIN/Uneb), Campus Irecê-BA. ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8386613530621060; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6520-0608; E-mail: [email protected].
To cite this review
HARARI, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: uma breve história da humanidade. São Paulo. Companhia das Letras , 2015. 464p. Review by: DURÃES, Helber Vieira. Animals and Gods. Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.3, n.13, Set/Oct., 2023. Available at <Animals and Gods – Helber Vieira Durães’s (FAI) review of “Sapiens – Uma breve história da humanidade”, by Yuval Noah Harari – Crítica Historiografica (criticahistoriografica.com.br)>.
Abstract: Sapiens – Uma breve história da humanidade, by Yuval Noah Harari, published in 2020 by Companhia das Letras publisher, explores the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions that shaped humanity. With 471 pages, Harari, an Israeli historian, offers a biological, social and behavioral perspective of the human species.
Keywords: History of humanity, revolution, and sapiens.
Sapiens — uma breve história da humanidade was originally released in 2011 in Israel, but would soon become an international work, being translated into more than forty countries and recommended by names such as Barack Obama, Bill Gates, actress Natalie Portman, the philosopher Brazilian Leandro Karnal, among others. In Brazil it was translated into its first edition by Jorio Dauster and released by Companhia das Letras in 2020. The work has 4 parts with 20 chapters distributed in 471 pages. Although without an introduction text, the author presents us with three revolutions of our species that, according to him, shaped the course of our history. They are: Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolution. Let us consider, therefore, that the purpose of the book is to narrate these revolutions and their consequences for living beings.
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli historian born in 1976. It is PH.D in History from the University of Oxford and a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It has a line of research directed to the relationship between biology, concept of justice and social relations with the timeline of human history. In addition to the international sapiens phenomenon – a brief history of humanity, Harari wrote the sequences “Homo Deus – a brief history of tomorrow” and also “21 lessons for the 21st century.” In 2012, he received the Polonsky Award for creativity and originality in humanistic disciplines.
In the first part, which comprises chapters from 1 to 4, the work makes a historical reading of the species in their biological, social and behavioral characteristics and proposing a reflection on the directions that homo sapiens have taken, from the principle that the sapiens They probably lived with other species of humans. While showing features that made us stand out from other species, such as the ability to plan and organize us, Sapiens explains that our ancestors were already able to produce fiction, to believe in the imagination, whether for their own fun as telling stories, creating gods, unit a group by ideal. He exemplifies that a Neanderthal, though stronger and also with a larger brain in his individuality, would not be able to defeat a group of sapiens for his own as he is short in the ability to plan.
This first part, called the cognitive revolution, suggests that sapiens are responsible for the extinction of other human species, pointing to the coincidence that each region that homo sapiens arrive, leave traces of destruction, or by an unfortunate chance, species reduce Their numbers and tend to disappear, without discarding the possibility that themselves have devised these extinctions: “Maybe that’s exactly why our ancestors eliminated the Neanderthals. They were too similar to ignore themselves, but different to without tolerated ”(p.26). The author underlies the impact of cognitive revolution, pointing to the fact that still in time – between 70 and 12,000 years ago – skilled collecting hunters, there was no significant change in our DNA, but our advance was so fast that the other species was of animals did not have time to adapt. This stage of the book is marked about our trail in the world from the point of view of reasoning and what we did with this power.
In chapters from 5 to 8, regarding the part of the Agricultural Revolution, the author shows that upon arriving in the Middle East 70,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens spent the next 50,000 years thriving in that following region without dedicating themselves to agriculture and there are More than 9,000 years actually cultivated grains while the nomadic life of the hunter-collar was left. Here the author makes a relationship between the cultivation of the fields, eating habits, increased demographic indices, child mortality linked to the fact that children in settlements feed less on breast milk, impacts on the body of sapiens – unnatural
These conditions in settlements require more food, more care, more demand. Thus, it is possible to understand that the sapiens now also needed to worry about saving and storing food. The next crop plans in search of economic-alimentary security. Here there was already a problem of distribution, leaders, elites, political organizations, surplus, concentration of resources and inequality. For Harari, “the story is what some people did while all the others were plowing fields and carrying buckets of water” (p.116). In this part of the book, Harari adds that other factors responsible for the construction of a large group of Homo Sapiens are based on social buildings. This includes not only systems, but beliefs, gender in its discussion about natural and unnatural.
In the part of the Scientific Revolution, which comprises chapters from 14 to 20, the work makes a climb in the process that questions move the growing scientific: the need not to accept to stagnate in current knowledge. At this stage of the work, words such as science, resources, power, capital, market and meaning of life gain space.
Here the author scains the growing scientific, its impacts and makes projections for a future in which technology can guarantee us longevity and immortality, but also, as gods – taking other animals as a parameter of power – we can also disappear. Our greatest power is the cause of our end. We are many, we can very much, we want too much, but we do not know what we want and we are always dissatisfied.
Realistic scenarios remain that limit global warming to 1.5ºC | Photo: Marek Piwnicki/Unsplash/Globo.com
The author makes an analysis through what he called the scientific revolution feedback cycle in which scientific research needs resources provided by those who have power. Funding research, these agents provide them with advances and discoveries that give them even more advantages to having more power and thus restarts the cycle. In short, governments and entities finance research to obtain and develop new technologies for their own benefit.
The work is indeed inviting for reflections of origins, development and survival as a species, as well as a futuristic projection based on this walk. However, it can be seen that during this literary trip, the author unites proven historical information with propositions that have a value of “already thought if it was like this?” That is, it mixes these two argumentative strategies a lot. As the construction is done with care and richness of detail, this can give a sense of official to the whole set, which for a lay reader in history is harmful. Moreover, at times, Harari makes it clear that the theory he is addressing is not accepted by a substantial portion of researchers, but does so soon after “selling it” during reading. Finally, having an introduction that is beyond a temporal table and a conclusion that is not a pessimistic retrospective, – and clearer than a teaser for the author’s next futuristic book – would give the work the chord that seems to be missing to be finished a song.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, the book is a walk in the recent moments of the Cenozoic era, humanity being the most recent but so significant event from the point of view of the historical record, the biological and cultural inheritances of our ancestors. The perception is that we are – albeit powerful – animals, alone as species, but nothing good coexistence with other animals. In this experience, joining a prehistoric journey with a futuristic projection, it may be possible to feel a semantic game that gives vent to a pleasant and just question: a brief history of humanity is so briefly being told, or the author suggests That our story here, while species will be brief?
Considering that the objective of the work was to show the three proposed revolutions and their impact on the course of human history, the book makes an excellent timeline, building arguments and grounds of the narrated moments, we will give here as fulfilled its goal. In the work the author builds the narrative about the human being, Homo sapiens from a perspective of insignificant animal, with physical weaknesses and physical strength below another – or other – species of humans with which he lived and closes as a god Irresponsible and dissatisfied, but so powerful. In each part the reader may reflect and feel the advance as a species and its consequences as they occur, receiving the futuristic perspective without impact because the steps were contemplated for this ideal construction. It is a work suitable for history students, enthusiasts of knowledge of origins of humanity, theologians and politicians.
Summary ofSapiens: uma breve história da humanidade
I: A Revolução cognitiva
1. Um animal insignificante
2. A árvore do conhecimento
3. Um dia na vida de Adão e Eva
4. O dilúvio
II: A Revolução agrícola
5. A maior fraude da história
6. Construindo Pirâmides
7. Sobrecarga da Memória
8. Não há justiça na história
III: A unificação da Humanidade
9. A seta da história
10. O cheiro do dinheiro
11. Visões Imperiais
12. A Lei da religião
13. O segredo do sucesso
IV. A Revolução científica
14. A descoberta da ignorância
15. O casamento da ciência com o império
16. A fé capitalista
17. As engrenagens da indústria
18. Uma revolução permanente
19. E viveram felizes para sempre
20. O fim do Homo Sapiens
Epílogo: O animal que se tornou um Deus
Agradecimentos
Notas
Créditos das imagens
Índice remissivo
Reviewer
Helber Vieira Durães is a professor of Geography, professor of extensionists in Civil Engineering at FAI – Faculdade Irecê, graduated in Architecture and Urbanism at Unifacisa (2016), specialist in structures and foundations by Faculdade Anhanguera (2020) Special student of Master in Estudos Africanos, Povos Indígenas e Cultura Negra ( PPGEAFIN/Uneb), Campus Irecê-BA. ID LATTES: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8386613530621060; ID ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-6520-0608; E-mail: [email protected].
To cite this review
HARARI, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: uma breve história da humanidade. São Paulo. Companhia das Letras , 2015. 464p. Review by: DURÃES, Helber Vieira. Animals and Gods. Crítica Historiográfica. Natal, v.3, n.13, Set/Oct., 2023. Available at <Animals and Gods – Helber Vieira Durães’s (FAI) review of “Sapiens – Uma breve história da humanidade”, by Yuval Noah Harari – Crítica Historiografica (criticahistoriografica.com.br)>.
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