Good Reads had this to say:
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens.
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?
Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power … and our future.
But having read “Guns, Germs and Steel”, this book seems quite under-researched. Moreover, Jared Diamond presents facts, and where such facts are not available, presents all possible theories and their probability of occurrence. In Sapiens, Dr. Harari often presents a limited set of historic events, and draws up a reasoning for the events. These are presented as conclusion which borders on conjecture, rather than a possibility. Oftentimes, it seems as though he has a conclusion and then cherry-picks the events to illustrate.
While the book and his conclusions are thought-provoking, they are not quite as absolutes as presented. I would recommend this book still, as it is an easy read.