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neilmartin's review against another edition
5.0
Likely one of the best books I've ever read. This truly made me appreicate how we have come during a species and covers some of our massive accomplishments and hardships as a species.
huyle's review against another edition
4.0
I’m kept intrigued throughout the entirety of the book. I learned much about random things as well as the history stuff from this.
Would recommend this to anyone.
Would recommend this to anyone.
fbroom's review against another edition
3.0
The book talks about the three main revolutions that happened to us, the cognitive revolution around 70,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution around 11,000 years ago and the scientific revolution around 500 years ago. The last part talks about the future and the biological revolution (genetics engineering). The book raises a lot of questions and tries to answer many. It is entertaining but I found the first part to be more focused than the second part which was more about the author’s opinions on various topics such as Happiness (which is a topic already beaten to death in several other books). It’s also not a neutral book, the author definitely has strong opinions on many subjects.
Topics or ideas:
Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution
* How cooking helped us become smarter. Cooking reduced the time to eat from hours to merely an hour. Cooked food is easier on the intestines so our intestines got smaller over time allowing our brains to become bigger.
* How our genes make us prefer high calorie diets naturally. While in the old days we are on the move all the time, nowadays high calorie diets aren’t really suited to our lifestyles.
* Also women who gave birth much later faced mortality while women who game to premature humans survived.
* How fiction is crucial to humans. The ability to make up stories and myths (example religions and beliefs) and believe in them led us to better work together and also achieve more.
* Gossip as well was essential to our existence.
* Did you we kill the neanderthals or did we merge with them? It was long believed that we actually replaced them. Newer evidence from 2010 shows that 1-4% of our genes is actually form the neanderthals.
* We were the dangerous species on Earth, causing mass extinction of many species wherever we moved.
Part 2: The Agricultural Revolution
* The agricultural revolution started in three places, the Middle East, China and Latin America independently.
* Even though the agricultural revolution led to current advanced society, are we really happy? The author thinks that the agricultural revolution is fraud. It domesticated us. The author pointed out that the agricultural revolution allowed “lazy bums” to become peasants and do minimal work and survive (they wouldn’t survive in the hunter-gatherer era). It created the concept of “home” so humans are now self-centered and attached to their location, before they always traveled and never got attached to things). I’m not sure about that? I mean yes the hunter gatherer groups had more freedom but we would’n’t have advanced societies if we just kept moving around to hunt? Would we?
* Another side effects of the agricultural revolution was the mythical or fictional order imposed on people. If we compare Hamorabi’s constitution and classification (servants, commons, superiors) and today’s American constitution of equal rights, which is better? The author says that both are wrong. Both are made up in our heads. Who can say that humans are equal and on what basis?
* The following chapters discussed some history of the Empires, Money and Religion (Monotheism, Polytheism, etc). Empires, Money and Religions each had their contribution into unifying humans from different cultures and places.
* Empires had a large effect on humanity, it swallowed a lot of small cultures and introduced new traits like for example how the British empire introduced drinking tea in India and across the middle east.
* Money took many forms throughout history. In 3000BC people in Sumer traded using Barely. Hamorabi’s law mentioned using the Silver Shekel which is equal to a fixed amount of silver. Today
Part 3: The Scientific Revolution
* Capitalism and Imperialism are what ignited the Scientific Revolution.
* The industrial revolution, the other evil like the agricultural revolution. Humans now have set schedules that they are tied to.
* The future of the biological revolution and genetics engineering and the making of super humans
* Happiness? I guess all the three revolutions didn’t have an impact on our happiness. Yeah money does buy happiness, surprise? again let’s make the point that being a hunter gatherer is better? What is that mean? even if that’s true, do we just abandon everything and go back to the old ways? I’ve read several other books on this specific topic and I found the author here just throwing opinions meh.
Topics or ideas:
Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution
* How cooking helped us become smarter. Cooking reduced the time to eat from hours to merely an hour. Cooked food is easier on the intestines so our intestines got smaller over time allowing our brains to become bigger.
* How our genes make us prefer high calorie diets naturally. While in the old days we are on the move all the time, nowadays high calorie diets aren’t really suited to our lifestyles.
* Also women who gave birth much later faced mortality while women who game to premature humans survived.
* How fiction is crucial to humans. The ability to make up stories and myths (example religions and beliefs) and believe in them led us to better work together and also achieve more.
* Gossip as well was essential to our existence.
* Did you we kill the neanderthals or did we merge with them? It was long believed that we actually replaced them. Newer evidence from 2010 shows that 1-4% of our genes is actually form the neanderthals.
* We were the dangerous species on Earth, causing mass extinction of many species wherever we moved.
Part 2: The Agricultural Revolution
* The agricultural revolution started in three places, the Middle East, China and Latin America independently.
* Even though the agricultural revolution led to current advanced society, are we really happy? The author thinks that the agricultural revolution is fraud. It domesticated us. The author pointed out that the agricultural revolution allowed “lazy bums” to become peasants and do minimal work and survive (they wouldn’t survive in the hunter-gatherer era). It created the concept of “home” so humans are now self-centered and attached to their location, before they always traveled and never got attached to things). I’m not sure about that? I mean yes the hunter gatherer groups had more freedom but we would’n’t have advanced societies if we just kept moving around to hunt? Would we?
* Another side effects of the agricultural revolution was the mythical or fictional order imposed on people. If we compare Hamorabi’s constitution and classification (servants, commons, superiors) and today’s American constitution of equal rights, which is better? The author says that both are wrong. Both are made up in our heads. Who can say that humans are equal and on what basis?
* The following chapters discussed some history of the Empires, Money and Religion (Monotheism, Polytheism, etc). Empires, Money and Religions each had their contribution into unifying humans from different cultures and places.
* Empires had a large effect on humanity, it swallowed a lot of small cultures and introduced new traits like for example how the British empire introduced drinking tea in India and across the middle east.
* Money took many forms throughout history. In 3000BC people in Sumer traded using Barely. Hamorabi’s law mentioned using the Silver Shekel which is equal to a fixed amount of silver. Today
Part 3: The Scientific Revolution
* Capitalism and Imperialism are what ignited the Scientific Revolution.
* The industrial revolution, the other evil like the agricultural revolution. Humans now have set schedules that they are tied to.
* The future of the biological revolution and genetics engineering and the making of super humans
* Happiness? I guess all the three revolutions didn’t have an impact on our happiness. Yeah money does buy happiness, surprise? again let’s make the point that being a hunter gatherer is better? What is that mean? even if that’s true, do we just abandon everything and go back to the old ways? I’ve read several other books on this specific topic and I found the author here just throwing opinions meh.
sfaircloth's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
4.5
I can’t imagine the amount of research needed to provide the information in this book. I do wish it had talked a little bit more about the difference and similarities between us and Neanderthals (physically, etc.), but I’ll find another book for that. This was filled with incredible societal information.
jadeelizaerrez's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I’m for sure a hoe for a macro lens on human history and behavior. This book definitely delivered on that front. Though I felt that the way in which the author attempted to stay unbiased and apolitical revealed unintentional other biases embedded in his privileged identities, especially when discussing the current sociopolitical state of the anthropocene. There is a lot to gain from the information in this book and I would recommend it. I did find the writing to be pretty dry in a lot of places, but that’s a personal preference.
andreandrea's review against another edition
5.0
The author shares with the reader well sourced thoughts about humanity.
The book is basically organised in three main parts:
-) past history of humanity, from its beginnings
-) an insightful analysis of the current world economy and human organisations
-) human psychology and fundamental questions, thoughts about possible futures of our species
The book is really pleasant to read, it is easy and it takes you by hand to really understand the author's way of thinking.
It made me like history in a way that I would have never thought.
You can get really good food for thought out of it. The author is really good at distinguishing between his thoughts and facts, linking all the sources.
You may disagree with some of the author's thoughts, but this only offers to you some new and insightful views about our world.
The book is basically organised in three main parts:
-) past history of humanity, from its beginnings
-) an insightful analysis of the current world economy and human organisations
-) human psychology and fundamental questions, thoughts about possible futures of our species
The book is really pleasant to read, it is easy and it takes you by hand to really understand the author's way of thinking.
It made me like history in a way that I would have never thought.
You can get really good food for thought out of it. The author is really good at distinguishing between his thoughts and facts, linking all the sources.
You may disagree with some of the author's thoughts, but this only offers to you some new and insightful views about our world.
rey_c's review against another edition
Did some more research on the book; looks like it is not very scientifically grounded and there is a good amount of controversy.