Book Review: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

By Yuval Noah Harari

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Sapiens is a provocative exploration of human history that defies the traditional “textbook” mold. Rather than a dry recitation of dates or the rise and fall of specific empires like the Ottomans, Harari provides a macro-history of our species—tracing our journey from obscure African apes to the masters of the planet.

The Survival of the Last Human

One of the book’s most striking revelations is that Homo sapiens was once just one of several human species. Around 100,000 years ago, we shared the earth with at least six other species, including the Neanderthals and Homo erectus.

While Neanderthals were physically stronger and possessed larger brains, Sapiens ultimately prevailed. Harari attributes this not to physical prowess, but to the Cognitive Revolution (approx. 70,000 years ago). This gave us a unique “language” that allowed us not only to share information about the physical world but to discuss things that don’t exist—fiction, myths, and legends. This ability to believe in shared myths allowed us to cooperate in flexible groups numbering in the thousands, whereas other species were limited to small, intimate troops.

The Fraud of Agriculture

The book takes a surprisingly cynical view of the Agricultural Revolution (approx. 12,000 years ago). While we often view the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer as a leap forward, Harari labels it “history’s biggest fraud.” He argues that while it allowed the total population of Sapiens to explode, the average individual’s life became harder, more disease-ridden, and less varied than that of their foraging ancestors.

The Power of “Imagined Orders”

A central pillar of Harari’s work is the idea that almost everything we prioritize today is an Imagined Order. He posits that biology is the only objective reality; everything else, money, religion, human rights, and corporations, exists only within our collective imagination.

• Money: It has no intrinsic value; it works only because billions of people believe in the story of its value.
• Empire: These structures allowed total strangers to cooperate toward a common goal by sharing a belief in a national or ideological identity.

The Ecological Cost and the Future

Harari doesn’t shy away from our species’ destructive wake. He notes that wherever Sapiens arrived, mass extinctions followed long before the Industrial Revolution.

While he acknowledges that modern humans enjoy unprecedented peace and reduced famine, he raises a haunting point: the suffering of laboratory and farm animals has reached an all-time high. The “success” of the species has come at a massive ethical cost.

Finally, Harari examines what might come next for our species:

Writing in 2014, Harari was remarkably prescient about the trajectory of technology. He concludes by looking toward the “Gilgamesh Project,” the human quest for immortality through science. He speculates that we are currently using biological engineering and A.I. to move beyond natural selection. We may be the last generation of Sapiens; our successors will likely be “cyborgs” or inorganic beings that look nothing like us. He does note that this is speculation based on how things are moving, and not everything comes true, and that a lot depends on how we, as humans, react to things as they change or are changing now.

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