Book Review - Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari’s 2011 book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, is both an impressive act of literary synthesis, and a problematic work of science communication. Though it is a great place to start if you’ve no prior knowledge, it is also cleverly biased, willfully misleading, and should definitely be taken with several grains of salt.
The book is set out chronologically across our history, from life among the trees to the age of science and the exponential increase in humanity’s god-like powers. It is separated into four sections: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, the unification of humankind and the scientific revolution.
Sapiens is an impressive synthesis of humanity. It draws from a vast array of fields, including economic history, anthropology and evolutionary biology. This book is an amalgamation of decades of research findings, written into a coherent and concise narrative that is easily palatable to the layman, a thoroughly respectable effort in any context. Its popularity and far-reach have brought so much of human history into the public conscience, where previously one would have had to sift through numerous academic-style books or take a whole undergraduate degree to have access to all the information at once.
While it makes for comfortable reading, the construction of such a concise and air-tight narrative is where I take most of my issues with Harari’s work. Reader beware that Harari is constructing a story here, rather than transparently presenting alternate evidence to the reader and allowing them, trusting their intelligence, to draw conclusions. As such, he trips up in areas where scientific debate has not yet determined what the truth is. This is, in my opinion, a gravely unethical way to communicate science, especially where one is attempting to summarise for a non-specialist audience. For example, the cause of megafaunal extinctions worldwide is still hotly debated between the plausible causes, which are mainly climate change and human hunting. But in his effort to craft a story without plot holes, Harari chooses heavy support for the human-perpetrated extinction hypothesis. Perhaps he makes this choice to capitalise on trending anti-humanist sentiments that have come out of the climate crisis. In any case, for a non-specialist in this study area to project such an agenda in the form of popular-science media is fundamentally dishonest and wilfully misleading of naive readers who take this book for absolute truth.
In general, Harari leaves no room for alternate perspectives or transparency and never acknowledges that so much about humankind is unknown. The same book could have been infinitely better written if it simply gave the reader credibility to entertain many possible hypotheses, and not be spoon-fed an answer. Granted, in some places he does acknowledge that there are those who disagree with a certain hypothesis but will then go on to paint them as simple dissidents in the matter, thoroughly retaining emphasis on his own agenda. Sapiens is not balanced or nuanced, but rather the manifesto of one singular historian, which ought to be given no more weight than that of any other singular academic.
Harari’s writing style, however, must be credited, it is a very smooth and engaging read, which is refreshing since often books like this fall into being too textbook-y. Yet, this seductive style is also what scares me. I found myself thoroughly believing Harari’s storytelling on topics with which I am unfamiliar. And conversely, finding numerous issues with his discussion of topics within my expertise. So, I thought, “if I know he’s wrong in all these ways here, what is he not telling me there?”
Though there are issues, I’ll grant that Sapiens is definitely a great place to start if you want to learn about the human race and need a one-stop place to get a comprehensive overview. But I give readers the same advice a schoolteacher would give about Wikipedia. Treat it as your introduction to the topic but approach with healthy scepticism and be careful to verify everything you read before believing it.