Sapiens is a globally recognized humanities book and a staple recommendation for students in Korea. It's definitely a 'good' book, and the author has been active in Korea, appearing on TV and releasing follow-up titles. To answer the title's question first: yes, it is. Looking at the author's background, he has a BA from Hebrew University (Medieval/Military History) and a PhD from Oxford (Medieval History). His papers are mostly on war and military history, and 'Sapiens' itself is based on his lectures. I think calling it a general education (pop-science) book is accurate. I'll emphasize this again from the start: it's not a bad book for beginners interested in the humanities. The stuff below is criticism, but again, it's a good book. However, if you talk about this book's contents as absolute truth in front of someone who actually knows the subject or a major, you're gonna catch hands (happened to me). There are issues with 'macro-history,' and military historians often get flak for this. Anthropology or history majors might find my points weird, so please understand. What I hate is excessive generalization or claiming only one theory among many is correct.
Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't read the book yet and plan to, hit the back button. The book starts and ends with questions: 'How did these three revolutions affect humans and their neighbors?' and ends with 'What do we want to want?' It's a great framing for a pop-science book. He covers the three big revolutions—Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific—and emphasizes power, unity, and happiness while telling the story of how Sapiens took over the planet. He also discusses money, politics, and religion as 'universal orders.' Highlighting the Cognitive Revolution was a fresh take for an intro book. Now, for the problems. I'll list three main ones: 1. He's talking anthropology, but his major is history. Anthropologists don't exactly 'accept' this book. 2. For those who've read it multiple times, check the bibliography. For a 600-page book making such strong claims, is that enough references? It's questionable. 3. The Fallacy of Generalization. Trying to cram all of human history into one book is the classic 'macro-history' trap. This book is especially bad at it. It's very results-oriented and picks one specific part to generalize the whole. Since this is Fmkorea, I'll use a football analogy: it's like a player playing like absolute trash all game, but then scoring two fluke goals and getting MOTM. People who only see the highlights or stats go 'Wow, he played well,' but fans who watched the whole game are like 'Are you serious? He's just stat-padding.' The book fits the process to the result and fills the gaps with what feels like 'plausible imagination.' Let's look at Chapter 1: 'Whether Sapiens was to blame or not, it's a fact that as soon as they arrived in a new area, the native humans went extinct.' He claims Sapiens slaughtered the Neanderthals. Current research says you can't say that for sure, but he adopts the 'Genocide Theory' as the narrative for the whole book. While they disappeared during the Late Pleistocene extinction, there are many theories (and rebuttals). It's one hypothesis, but he treats it as fact. Aside from the Y chromosome, non-African populations are genetically linked to Neanderthals. It's a back-and-forth debate, but he's too definitive. You might say 'it's an old book, research caught up,' but even then, there were multiple theories—Climate Change, Absorption, Competitive Exclusion, Disease, etc.
Svante Pääbo, who won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution, proved that parts of the human genome include Neanderthal DNA. This field is still being researched. 2. 'This is the key to Sapiens' success. In a one-on-one fight, a Neanderthal might have beaten a Sapiens. But in a fight of hundreds, the Neanderthal wouldn't stand a chance. Neanderthals could share info about a lion, but they couldn't create fiction, so they couldn't cooperate on a large scale.' Two points here: 1. The idea that Sapiens were weak but had large groups while Neanderthals were small groups. 2. The claim that Sapiens had the 'fiction' ability and Neanderthals didn't. 2023 research suggests Sapiens had higher population density while Neanderthals lived in lower density. Dental studies suggest it was just a difference in maintaining group sizes fit for their environment—similar to the difference between nomads and settled farmers. Neanderthals actually roamed wider areas without competitors; would 'weak' beings be able to do that? Now, for the rebuttal to point #2.
Dirk Hoffmann of the Max Planck Institute said, 'There is no longer any doubt that Neanderthals could think symbolically just like modern humans.' He suggested the ability for symbolic expression might have been common to our shared ancestors. Professor Paul Pettitt noted that similar results were found in three caves 700km apart in Spain, suggesting other European cave art could be Neanderthal-made. Bae Ki-dong, director of the National Museum of Korea, mentioned the long-standing debate on whether art appeared suddenly 40,000–50,000 years ago or emerged gradually, stating this is more evidence for the latter. This was another debated area that Harari just flatly denied. He picked the theory he liked and ran with it. I just wrote this on a whim, so I'm not sure if I'll write a part two. I know the readability is probably crap, so please go easy on me. 'The Selfish Gene' in the 70s, 'Cosmos' in the 80s, 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' in the 90s, 'Justice' in the 00s, and 'Sapiens' in the 10s—these popular steady-sellers are great entry points, but they have unavoidable limits. As an 'author,' Harari's achievement in making such a massive topic interesting is incredible. But when authors write outside their field or compress info, they inevitably face criticism for generalization. I used a clickbaity title, but I just wanted to mention that while it's a good intro, you shouldn't take the contents too seriously if you aren't going to dive deeper into anthropology.
"The community generally agrees that while the scientific 'facts' might be debatable, Sapiens is the undisputed GOAT of fun, introductory humanities books. Some users even started listing other 'legendary' books by decade."
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