Table of Content
It is hard to fathom that it was a moment of altruism. He was an intelligent man and must have felt that Christianity offered the best way to better control his people and unite them under one concept, instead of the host of gods that polytheism offered. Interestingly, Harari’s argument also establishes the anthropological foundations for literary post-modernism. The author doesn't treat you as ignorant at all - he doesn't assume you know nothing but assume you know a lot and understand a lot, and doesn't lecture about anything, and that attitude makes the book a pleasure to read. I believe I am relatively familiar with history in general, and I'm usually not very excited about reading more about it. Finally, I had a problem with the scope of Sapiens.
Once started, though the book is somewhat long, you will not feel tempted to skip over any parts of it. Notwithstanding the questionable attempt to raise the reader's hackles, just mentioned, I find myself on p. 170 and 95% of this is material I already know. Granted, the author tries to package it as felicitously as possible, but it's still stuff I know and, no doubt, material my well read GR friends will also know.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind PDF Details
Sapiens is thought to have evolved sometime between 160,000 and 90,000 years ago in Africa before migrating first to the Middle East and Europe and later to Asia, Australia, and the Americas. And controlled fire — activities once thought of as distinctly human. Indeed, Stringer dismisses behavior as a way to differentiate species. "Behavior is not a valid way of defining a species," he said. "Behavior is shared much more easily than anatomy." The main character of the story are Simon Spier, Martin Addison, Abby Suso, Nick Eisner, Leah Burke.
The Cro-Magnon site at Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic produced the earliest evidence for high temperature kilns and ceramic technology. The kilns, dated at 26,000 years old, were capable of firing clay figurines at temperatures over 400 degrees Celsius. About 2000 fired lumps of clay were found scattered around the kiln. Jaws are lightly built and have a protruding bony chin for added strength.
Dictionary entries near Homo sapiens
However, everything started to go downhill from somewhere in the middle of Part II. From an eager and excited reader I slowly became pissed off, disappointed and struggled to finish. I had several problems that plagued my reading experience and I plan to exemplify them below. Wonder at how far we've come in just a few millennia; wonder at all the twisting roads of history; wonder at where we could possibly end up.
In order to understand another culture, one should look at the "Catch 22's", that is, look where rules and standards contradict each other. For example, in Medieval Europe, there was a clash between Christianity and chivalry. In modern Western civilization, there are clashes between equality and liberty. Some civilizations are built quite differently from our own. For example, the Bari Indians believe that genes do not come from a single pair of parents, but that they are contributed by multiple fathers. Monogamous relationships do not exist among their tribes.
Evolutionary Tree Information:
The book starts out alright was the hunter-gatherer civilizations are discussed in some detail and without focusing exclusively on North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Harari's chapters here did make for decent reading about the concept the author calls the cognitive revolution which separates us from other animals. Unfortunately, the next section about the agricultural revolution is a bit too polemical. Yes, it was a radical change and yes it did lead to new problems , but without it, the human species would likely have never evolved to the point of me typing this text on my laptop and you reading it in a browser. There are not parallel paths proposed, just a vague condemnation of agriculture before he takes on the subject of religions. Here, he talks of the evolution of monotheism from the polytheistic systems that abounded before.
Fossils of the earliest members of our species, archaic Homo sapiens, have all been found in Africa. Fossils of modern Homo sapiens have been found in Africa and in many other sites across much of the world. Sites older than 150k include Florisbad, Omo-Kibish, Ngaloba and Herto. Sites dating to about 100k include Klasies River Mouth, Border Cave, Skhul and Qafzeh. Sites younger than 40k include Dolni Vestonice, Cro-Magnon, Aurignac and Lake Mungo.
ABOUT THE BOOK
He's particularly interesting on the subject of money. Again, I can see some readers who dislike what they call his cheerleading for modern Western society. I don't think Harari is a fan of the West, and the book is in my humble opinion not Eurocentric at all; for example, Harari seems to like Buddhism rather more than Christianity. He's just pointing out the indisputable fact that Western society has taken over the world, and he ascribes that, more than anything else, to the West's ability to make up a better story about money, which we call capitalism. If this is where you're coming from, talking about the power of myth to transform human existence, you don't go overboard with the footnotes. You do your best to tell a great story, and you hope that it will transform our existence.
Early modern humans were adapted to life in the tropics but by 40,000 years ago they occupied a range of environments across the continents of Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Within the last 20,000 years humans have also spread into the Americas. Today, our culture and technology allows us to live in most environments on our planet as well as some off our planet. Sapiens focuses on key processes that shaped humankind and the world around it, such as the advent of agriculture, the creation of money, the spread of religion and the rise of the nation state. Unlike other books of its kind, Sapiens takes a multi-disciplinary approach that bridges the gaps between history, biology, philosophy and economics in a way never done before.
If the desire to gossip gave us speech, then the inability to gossip puts us right back into the pre-sapiens world. Bionic bodies though, that might be progress. But I guess this book is not for the history experts, for they might find things to be too simple. A connosiur of history might find the contents boring. However, for all others, this book has the ability to shift the way you look at the world quite profoundly.
As the titles suggests, the book tries to be A Brief History of Humankind. I believe he did not succeed very well to do that and the reason is that it is quite impossible to do what the author planned in less than 500 pages. The result is mix of everything with no structure, jumping from one subject to another and confusing the reader. The information was too vague, too general, it all resembled a set of interesting trivia.
Until it got so bad, I found myself unable to do more than skim, and eventually, to just skipping large chunks. Secondly, I felt like many of his assumptions and extrapolations had no proof and they only represent the author’s personal opinion. For example, the way he supported for the whole book that humans were better of as hunter-gathers without bringing no real arguments to support his opinion. I especially like how he presents a relatively unbiased view of events. He focuses on what we know, and is quick to say when something remains a mystery to biologists and anthropologists. When there are conflicting theories, he outlines all the main ones.
Venus figurines were widespread in Europe by 28,000 years ago. Fragments from Germany found in 2009, suggest their origins started at least 35,000 years ago. An ivory female head with bun from Dolni Vestonice, Czech Republic, is one of only 2 human head carvings from this period that show eye sockets, eyelids and eyeballs.
About Yuval Noah Harari
Physical prowess is inversely proportional to social power in most societies. He explores various theories, but none of them are very compelling. Harari compares the Code of Hammurabi with the American Declaration of Independence.
No comments:
Post a Comment