Is Sapiens Worth Reading?
Everyone talks about reading Sapiens. But at 400 pages of dense content, is it worth it? Upon reading, it soon becomes pretty clear that in reality we know very little about how humans evolved and developed. The scene of hunter gathers is painted with great details and provides a fascinating insight into humans early came about. It won’t change your life but you’ll gain an important perspective and appreciation about humans.
Pretty much everyone recommends reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Tim Ferris's podcast interviewee's often say that Sapiens is the book they gift the most and Amazon's 20,000 ratings give it 4.6 stars. But, with over 400 pages of dense content, is it actually worth reading? Or is it just 400 pages of boring, unenlightened, irrelevant history? Lets find out.
Early on in the book, it became clear to me that I didn't know much about the history of humans. It isn't studied in classrooms or discussed in modern day conversations or popular content. Most people seem to shrug off how we got here and do not seem too bothered to understand. You are therefore working off a bit of a blank slate. Yuval Noah Harari does an excellent job of building up the story and scenes with visual language depicting what an average day looked like hundreds of thousands of years ago. Essentially, a detailed, visual timeline is created in your mind showing the transformation of early humans to where we are now.
I really felt as if I could get inside an early human's mind and move about in their daily life giving me some sense of feeling as to what like was like, all those years ago. Linkages are made between the factual history and modern day scenarios, helping to understand why humans behave the way in which they do today. Such as, when an ancient forager came across a tree of figs, they usually ate all of them, as sweet things were rare and wouldn't last for long. This is why we want to devour a whole tube of Pringles or tub of Ben and Jerry's!
As much as the first part of the book explores and opens up a way of life and series of evolutionary events that I was not aware of, there is a fairly long chunk in the middle which drags on and is fairly familiar. We can understand how religion was formed and a part of history, yet, far too many pages are used to explain these types of things.
The last section of the book, about the scientific revolution we are in, provides a great, sufficiently detailed insight into the last couple of hundred years. It discusses the reasons for how things have changed after so long of no change and how this change continued exponentially. The final emphasis shares the possibilities of the future direction of humans and whether another revolution, such as a biological one, will take place.
In summary, this book condenses lots of research, ideas and the whole of human history into a logical, easy to read and understand, visual way that gives you an overview into a topic in which simply doesn't get taught elsewhere. I think it is definitely worth reading, although this is is not a life-changing book, in the sense you won't become enlightened or change the direction of your life. But, importantly, it does give an appreciation into how we got here. Be prepared for a slow patch in the middle and go into the book knowing that you probably have very limited knowledge of the topic and you will learn lots.
