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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
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Ellen Fetu
It is cleverly written. Plenty of factual knowledge along with interesting bits about people and history. I can only read so much every week…it is heavy for the non-academic. I think those who are raving about it are in this field of social and cultural anthropology. It's a huge undertaking on the part of the author and he is clearly competent. I WILL get through it…although have read a few other books on the side to survive!
Adrian
I agree with you Ellen. I'm listening to the audiobook during my hour long commute and on many occasions I found myself listening for 30 minutes and reflecting for 30 minutes.
Sorobai
I am currently reading it. I am not thinking it too dense. I think it reads like a breeze. It's really nice even if the author takes sometimes a very strong atheistic view on things. I know I know the cientific method and darwin and so on, but does it really explain everything? Anyway a nice and worthy read.
Nancy Highfield
I think you just really need to read it to know, it's very thought provoking, but thankfully Sapiens is written in a way that the facts are delivered smoothly and interestingly, the analogies are easy to understand. I think it's a book everyone should read, even if they don't like it.
Akshay Parashar
This books easily classifies as a must read. I would go as far as saying that it should be a part of the school curriculum. We get to know a lot of "what" in our schools, Sapiens focuses on "why" and "how".
I returned with a much wider perspective after going through this one.
I returned with a much wider perspective after going through this one.
Nick van der Merwe
After initially thinking this was a brilliant book, I have subsequently reflected and considered a number of concerns and questions I had itching at the back of my mind.
Some of my questions/concerns about the factual accuracies and how some of the conclusion have been drawn, including some blatant misrepresentations are well articulated in the following critical review (which may contain spoilers for those who still wish to read it):
https://www.bethinking.org/human-life...
Some of my questions/concerns about the factual accuracies and how some of the conclusion have been drawn, including some blatant misrepresentations are well articulated in the following critical review (which may contain spoilers for those who still wish to read it):
https://www.bethinking.org/human-life...
Francis Cook
Glad to hear that others struggle too; not that it's too dense but that the paradigms that frequently get tossed like a sack of grenades of this loooong history of the the anthropopos and the excellence of the Damascene Souk. Contemporaneously referenced (with some quite recent incidental references to DA'eSH atrocities to bear some of the journalisitic heavy-lifting from our the often genuinely sacred cows we're invited to watch melted into the next-up universal political/economic/social gains and losses (naming and not naming names as the case may be. On the whole the whole, recommended.
F Cook
F Cook
Lance Mellon
Not heavy at all in my opinion. Reads like a breeze.
Jane Olsen
I am only about 20% into the book, but I am fascinated by the connections to the archaeological and anthropological content of Jean Auel's fictional Earth Children series. I have to think that his data is not the most recent, because those books were written decades ago, and she spent many years researching. One of Harari's central pieces of data in particular, the bodies, including two children, found in Sungir graves from about 30,000 years ago, feature prominently in one story line in the book, The Mammoth Hunters, which was published in 1985. Auel also delves very heavily into the fraught coexistence of Neanderthal humans and Homo sapiens during the same period. For those who are finding the scientific material to be heavy going, I highly recommend her books, especially the first 4, which are terrific novels in addition to being chock full of good information about what life was probably like for these early humans. I also wonder whether Harari's information about the migration of humans across the land bridge from Asia to North America during the last Ice Age is still the most current understanding, because I believe archaeological evidence of human communities that predate that time has been found in various locations in the Americas, suggesting that explorers (probably from Indonesia/Polynesia) came by boat before that.
Duane
Is there any analysis in this book, of how Global Freezing or another such catastrophe may have been the determining factor in which "race" survived? (There is some genetic evidence that mankind at some point was reduced to a population of only a few dozen individuals, which would render nearly insignificant any differences between the surviving and non-surviving races.
Also, what does he use as a determining factor for "Sapient"... e.g. what characteristic distinguishes the difference between "Homo Sapiens" and all of the "Homos" which didn't survive, from the differences among the four "races" we now have, which did survive?
Also, what does he use as a determining factor for "Sapient"... e.g. what characteristic distinguishes the difference between "Homo Sapiens" and all of the "Homos" which didn't survive, from the differences among the four "races" we now have, which did survive?
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