Since I was a child, I grew up learning “Man is a social Animal”. I still remember reading a chapter in my history book about ‘Evolution of mankind’ with a diagram showing different stages of man evolving from an ape on four legs to a man on two. It looked simple and gave the impression that our ancestors evolved peacefully. But, there is a lot of history behind the transition from the stage of an ape to the final stage of a man, which Yuval Noah Harari discusses in his book - Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind.

Yuval Harari takes us back to 13.5 billion years ago, when “matter, energy, time and space came into being” , popularly known as The Big Bang. From here starts the tour of human species, the theories, history and beliefs behind our evolution.

Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind is divided into four parts: Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Unification of Humankind and Scientific Revolution.

The book begins with Yuval Harari discussing the fact that Homo Sapiens were not the only species among humans, we had other cousins as well - Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo Erectus, Homo Rudolfensis, who were driven to extinction. The major reason for the extinction was Homo Sapiens. And not only our cousins, Sapiens were responsible for the extinction of many other exotic species all over the world.

Why did Sapiens became the reason for the demise of other species? The answer is Cognitive Revolution. The first signs of evolution of brain was the discovery of fire, which changed the game for Sapiens. Earlier humans were somewhere in the middle of the food chain, tigers and other predators being on top and plants at the bottom. With the discovery of fire, the hunted became the hunter.

Furthermore, due to genetic changes in Sapiens, they gained something that is very rare among animals - ability to gossip. Yes! Gossip! With the ability to communicate and discovery of languages, now Sapiens could share the knowledge with more and more people among their kinds and devise plans. With the power to gossip, now they knew whom to trust and whom not to trust. Gradually, these hunter gatherers became larger groups and were bonded by fiction, stories and spirits they believed in. Over a period of time, they started discovering new lands and drove the natives of those lands to extinction, be it flora and fauna or the brethren Homo species.

The next stage of evolution was Agricultural Revolution. This was the transition of our ancestors from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Yuval Noah Harari mentions it as “History’s biggest fraud”, and here is the reason why. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors decided to become farmers in pursuit of a stable and fulfilled life. They started the back-breaking work of farming from planting, caring of crops, carrying heavy buckets of water, saving them from the insects to weeding them, it was a hard labor work. Now, they could not move from place to place. They became dependent on the rain and the water resources nearby. They had to establish permanent settlements, which had to be saved from other hunter-gatherers which resulted in them fighting for the land and their homes.

Hunter gatherers, lived a nomadic life, which means they were exposed to different lands and vegetation. They ate food which had variety of nutrients. One day it was nuts, other day a feast of boar and next day mushrooms. But with farming they were dependent on the crop that they were growing, so three times a day, day in day out, they ate the same meal, which resulted in malnutrition among people. Gradually with the creation of hierarchy, the dream of these farmers for a better future was lost. But now, after generations and generations of farming, they could not turn back to being hunter-gatherers because the skills were lost and more than that the good old days were forgotten.

Next came the Unification of Humankind. The major discovery in this era was that of money. Earlier civilizations used barter system, but this was not a very convenient way of getting what you wanted. For example, say you have one bag of apples and you want clothes. But the tailor doesn’t want apples, he needs shoes, so now, the only way barter would work is that hopefully the cobbler would want apples and in exchange of that he gives you shoes, so that you can barter them to get clothes. Phew! But what if cobbler doesn’t want apples, he wants oranges. Oh god!

Another problem that was resolved by the invention of money was this, how can the tailor be sure that the correct price of clothes is the sack of apples, last time he got two sacks, but they were of different quality. Again, confusion! With the discovery of money, now everything became easy. You can buy clothes and pay in shells or stone coins or iron coins whatever works in your community. And from those coins a tailor can go and buy shoes and cobbler can buy oranges. Also, now the tailor knows that the price of one cloth is two shells. Life became a lot simpler!

The final stage according to the book is Scientific Revolution. This happened when Sapiens shed their believes of knowing everything under religions and started embracing their ignorance. Europe was the one holding important cards in this era. With the advancement of technology, Europeans started sailing to other parts of the world and discovering different cultures. With the increase in knowledge the European dominance was established over the world. The inventions of aeroplanes, telephones, radios and ultimately nuclear bombs gradually changed the face of the world.

In the current epoch, we are still inventing new technologies on daily basis. With the creation of genetically engineered animals and plants to cyborgs, we are on the path to technological progress, but the dream of hunter gatherers to achieve happiness is still not achieved. Yuval Noah Harari concludes by saying that man came a long way from being an animal to playing a god with the power to create or destroy at its own will and yet have not found satisfaction. And leaves us with the question to ponder on “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”

This book gave a lot of answers to my questions like- How Sapiens evolved? What were the downsides of our evolution? Why did Sapiens become the reason for extinction of other species? and also gives some food for thought. For me Sapiens : A brief history of Humankind, was a book that proved to be intellectually simulating and an experience that I would like to go through again.