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A review by thechaliceofaries
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
4.0
The Animal That Became A God
I found this to be a very entertaining read that gave a broad overview of many different fields relating to Homo sapiens’ time on earth - including but not limited to anthropology, evolutionary biology, economics, and theology. It begins by describing our humble and insignificant beginnings as an animal with no considerable advantage in size, strength or abilities to the other larger and more intimidating predators around at the time, to our current position as the most powerful and terrifying species on the planet. Considering what a vast timespan it covers, it’s understandable that even with 460+ pages it only manages to touch on most of these topics briefly. However, it does provide an engaging, if not at times subjective, narrative of human’s place in the world, and gave me so much to think about. It’s worth keeping in mind that like all historical books, this is just one man’s account of things, including his own concepts and ideas (some which are easy to agree with, and others that I had trouble digesting as facts), and therefore everything that is read here should be taken with a grain of salt. However, in spite of this, Sapiens was a great introduction to many topics that I’m now motivated to further read up on, and I think everyone should give it a go at least once in their lives.
I found this to be a very entertaining read that gave a broad overview of many different fields relating to Homo sapiens’ time on earth - including but not limited to anthropology, evolutionary biology, economics, and theology. It begins by describing our humble and insignificant beginnings as an animal with no considerable advantage in size, strength or abilities to the other larger and more intimidating predators around at the time, to our current position as the most powerful and terrifying species on the planet. Considering what a vast timespan it covers, it’s understandable that even with 460+ pages it only manages to touch on most of these topics briefly. However, it does provide an engaging, if not at times subjective, narrative of human’s place in the world, and gave me so much to think about. It’s worth keeping in mind that like all historical books, this is just one man’s account of things, including his own concepts and ideas (some which are easy to agree with, and others that I had trouble digesting as facts), and therefore everything that is read here should be taken with a grain of salt. However, in spite of this, Sapiens was a great introduction to many topics that I’m now motivated to further read up on, and I think everyone should give it a go at least once in their lives.