Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Sapiens was in my reading-list for a very long time. I finally picked it up this month and done.
Before jumping into the negative parts, Sapiens is one of the best books I have ever read. My criteria for a book to be considered best is when it uses simple words with practical examples or analogies to explain concepts. I’m not a fan of paragraphs of explanation of abstract thoughts without any hint on how to apply it. Sapiens had an ample amount of examples, easy to understand writing. I liked how I can visualize the concepts and have a nod like yea this could have happened.
As someone who is not that much into history and biology, Sapiens was a good introduction. It covered the evolution of humans and how we came to the current state. Each chapter has good amount of stories that will ensure that you are not bored, rather understand the concepts better.
I was told about the controversy regarding this book. While reading, I also faced certain uhh wait what moments that did not resonate with my knowledge. The people who have read the book told me not to treat it is as a history or science book. I now have the same thought. This book should be framed as an opinionated perspective of human evolution and the future. I call it opinionated because after reading some reviews from experts, I found that this book lacks references to the claims. Most of the arguments put forward by the author is from his own perspective and not something that has been scientifically proven.
Of course, history itself is a perspective. Unlike a physics experiment, where we can prove or deny something purely on the scientific reasoning, we can not do the same for history. History is opinionated. We will never know whether the humans who lived as hunter-gatherers had a happier life than us. Even the definition of happiness is different from person to person. Also proof of existence of something does not count as the absence of its opposite. For example, the author says colonization brought nationality and technological advancements to the colonies. But we will never know that if the colonization never happened, then the colonies would not have chance to the technological advancement. May be much slower but at the same time, much peaceful.
The book has some heavy Europeanism vibes, like claiming that scientific revolution happened because Europeans accepted that they do not know anything and always wanted to seek more knowledge. It also says that this was pushed by business-minded population, whereas other regions like India or China did not do anything, because they believed they had all the required knowledge. This reasoning is discussed for a lot of pages saying this is why Europe colonized the world and not Africa, India or China. Everybody knows (and the book also confirms) that India and China were the economic centers of the world before colonization. So may be their rulers preferred the peace of guarding what they have than be driven by the greed that plagued Europe?
As I said, the book is full of opinions. Some are informative, some are crazy and some are outright annoying. In this way, it is better to classify it as an opinionated piece than a historical narrative. There are better reviews by experts who criticized the book from historical perspective, I suggest you to give them a read to know why.
The last few chapters were painful to read, it was like repeating the same points again and again. I got so tired of it such that I was counting pages and telling myself okay, just X more pages left.
One funny insight I learnt from this book is, never discuss opinionated perspective with people who can not hold a constructive positive discussion. While reading the book I imagined myself arguing these concepts with certain people. Like talking to a serious nationalist about advantages of colonialism or with an atheist about how religions helped in unification of people. So nope, always know your audience. Better to keep this radical thoughts to yourself than share it and get burnt out.
As a conclusion, this is a really nice book. Just know that it is from author’s perspective. When read that way, you will enjoy the book a lot, especially if you do not have much understanding about the concepts. For people with extensive knowledge of history, the book might be annoying.
