Homo sapiens: The deadliest species in the annals of planet Earth

The author of this book Dr Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in World History. His book takes us from the beginning of humankind to the present day human being while showing us what we have done to ourselves and to planet earth. This book will be a guide to truly understand the Political, Economical and Religious orders we are living in today. Here are some of the highlight that I felt thrilling and gripping:

Who are Homo sapiens?

Everyone reading this article is a Homo sapiens - the species sapiens (wise) of the genus Homo (man). The word Human means 'an animal belonging to the genus Homo' and there used to be many other species of this genus besides Homo sapiens. Some of our siblings are Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis. All are humans. One interesting fact about Humans is,

Humans are able to eat more varieties of food while spending less time to eating after they started fire for cooking, which left them with smaller teeth and shorter intestines. Since long intestines and large brains consume a lot of energy, it's hard to have both! In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts only for about 2-3 percent of total body weight, but it uses 25 percent of the body's energy when the body is at rest. Other apes brains require only 8 percent of the rest-time energy.

Why is Cognitive Revolution - a real game changer?

Initially, Social instincts of Humans are same like chimpanzees that enabled our humans to form friendships and hierarchies, and to hunt or fight together. Humans like chimpanzees were adopted to live in small close groups. But after the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. The appearance fiction helped large numbers of strangers to cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. These myths doesn't exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. Author quotes,

There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.

After Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens were living in a dual reality, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions on one hand and imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations on the other. This imagined reality become so powerful that today the survival of objective reality depends on imagined entities.

What are new abilities that Homo Sapiens got after the Cognitive Revolution?

Cognitive Revolution gave Homo Sapiens the ability to transmit large amount of information about the world and about Sapiens social relationships. This helped them in forming larger groups carrying out complex actions such as avoiding lions and hunting bison. They also got the ability to share information about things that do not really exist, such as tribal spirits, nations, limited liability companies and human rights. This led to the cooperation between very large numbers of strangers and innovation of social behavior.

How did our Homo Sapiens live as foragers (hunter gatherers)?

One theory says, Foragers lived in communes devoid of any private property, monogamous relationships and even fatherhood. Foragers moved from place to place with what ever they had on their backs in search of food. They had wider, deeper and through knowledge about every stream, every walnut tree, every bear cave and every flint-stone deposit in their vicinity. As a collective humanity, we know more things today than our foragers but at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skillful people in history.

Why are Homo Sapiens the most deadliest species on earth?

At the time Cognitive Revolution, earth was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals but by the time of Agricultural Revolution, only about a 100 remained on the planet. Homo sapiens led half of them to extinction by the time of Agricultural Revolution. Unlike terrestrial counterparts, the large sea animals suffered less from Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions. With present industrial pollution and overuse of oceanic resources, even they at the brink of extinction.

Why is Agricultural Revolution the history's biggest fraud?

Homo sapiens began to sow seeds, water plants, plucked weed from the ground and led sheep to prime pastures in desire to have more fruit, grain and meat. Even though Agricultural Revolution increased the sum total of food at the disposal of humans, the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. It translated into population explosion and pampered elites. Essence of the Agricultural Revolution quoted by the author as,

The ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.

If we measure the success by the number of DNA copies produced rather than quality of life, the Agricultural Revolution was a great boon for Sapiens, chicken, cattle, pigs, sheep and wheat. Yet in case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with complex emotions and sensations, we have to consider how evolutionary success of reproduction translates into individual experience.

What happened to Homo sapiens after the Agricultural Revolution?

Three universal orders appeared, whose devotees could imagine the entire human race as a single unit and governed by a single set of laws. They are Economic (Money), Political (Empires and States) and Religious orders. All these orders only existed in the collective imagination of Humankind and they endlessly peruse these imagined orders.

When someone makes all other believe in these imagined orders, they got lot of power, money and success as he is able to make large number of strangers to co-operate and work towards a common goal.

Conclusion: I haven't yet read the last chapter "The Scientific Revolution". Overall, I would say the Author collected so many historical events and evidences to picture Homo sapiens from the beginning of history until present day. But one thing for sure, Cognitive Revolution in humans changed the course of the planet in another direction which is completely different from billions of years of evolutionary process. I would highly encourage you to go through the book in order to understand the context and depth of information that I wrote in this article.

Disclaimer: All the ideas in this article are taken from the book titled "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" to summarize the key ideas and to encourage others to read the book.

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