Man in All His Glory
Embracing a certain autumnal impulse towards the academic, Riddle delves into Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari
Review by Kate Slotover
I think I saw someone reading this on the train the other day…
Yes, although it was published last year, good critical reviews and word of mouth have turned this book into the season’s must-read. It was even selected by Mark Zuckerberg for his Facebook bookclub (established with the laudable intent of reading and discussing an improving book every two weeks although what he’s doing with all this knowledge is anyone’s guess).
So what’s it about?
It’s about you. And the previous generations of your family all the way back to 6 million years ago, when a female ape had two daughters: ‘One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother’. Harari crisply recounts the story of our particular branch of the human species, Homo Sapiens, from our earliest days to the present, with some intriguing thoughts on what the future may hold.
Sounds interesting. But has this not been done before?
The obvious precursor is Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, a book Harari acknowledges he was inspired by. But whereas Diamond was a field anthropologist and roots his account in scientific data, Harari combines an historian’s interest in facts and interpretation with a novelist’s skill at vividly recounting them and, most pleasingly, a philosopher’s sense of the less tangible, more speculative arenas of the human mind.
Tell me more?
At every turn Harari offers surprising insights, even when the facts are already well known. You are probably aware, for example, that we are not the only branch of the human species; at one point we co-existed alongside others such as the Neanderthals. They were like us, good hunters with large brains who used tools and fire. Scientists are not sure why, but Homo Sapiens predominated and eventually wiped the Neanderthals out. Harari speculates on what our society might be like today if we were not the only examples of the human species in existence. ‘When Charles Darwin indicated that Homo Sapiens was just another kind of animal, people were outraged. Even today many refuse to believe it. Had the Neanderthals survived, would we still imagine ourselves to be a creature apart?’ The answer to the mystery of why our ancestors wiped out their fellow humans may be as simple as ‘they were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate’.
Homo Sapiens not the good guys, then?
Far from it. Our success as a species is predicated upon our self-interested habit of doing what serves us best in the moment and not thinking of the long-term consequences. This is not particularly pleasant to reflect on (genocide of indigenous Australians, Native Americans, animals, domestication, slave labour, to pick out just a few examples) and seen in these terms Sapiens is an inescapably depressing read. In fact if it inspires any immediate positive action it might be to encourage people to take up vegan-ism. Or Buddhism (the only religion Harari seems to have any time for).
And yet you’re recommending this? Why?
Firstly for the sheer pleasure of such surpassingly good writing. Harari’s sentences fly off the page laced with wisdom and humour. He could be criticised for eliding some of the details; when compressing thousands and thousands of years of history into 400 odd pages you have to gloss a few things it seems. But the skill with which he draws out key events and analyses the patterns within them, offering convincing arguments as to cause and effect, is nothing short of breathtaking, and a joy to experience.
Secondly because whether you agree or disagree, what is most unlikely is that this book will leave you unchanged. It is an enjoyably profound and provocative piece of writing that invites further reflection on the creatures we are, and the ways that we behave. Harari lifts the comfortable veil through which we tend to view our actions as human beings. This, it might not surprise you, is not a particularly uplifting journey of self-discovery. Yet it is worth understanding where we came from, Harari argues, in order to better understand where we are now.
And the future? What does that hold?
In the short term (next 100 years or so) science will most probably vanquish death itself. Now there’s an interesting prospect. Why? Because who do you think is going to get the anti-death treatments? Not everybody, that’s for sure. Most likely it will be the people who can afford it. And so for the very first time we are faced with the idea of super humans who will have the ability to live forever. For the first time the rich will be not only socially but also biologically distinct from the rest of the population. But don’t get excited. It’s not going to be you or me. It’s going to be, hmmm, let’s see, who could afford it? Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber and Bill Gates… Justin Bieber, Bill Gates and Evan Spiegel… Life, if we make it that far, is going to get weird.