‘Tolerance’ he says, ‘is not a Sapiens trademark’ (p19), setting the scene for the sort of animal he will depict us to be. He brings the picture up to date by drawing conclusions from mapping the Neanderthal genome, which he thinks indicates that Sapiens did not merge with Neanderthals but pretty much wiped them out. The book covers a mind-boggling 13.5 billion years of pre-history and history.įrom the outset, Harari seeks to establish the multifold forces that made Homo (‘man’) into Homo sapiens (‘wise man’) – exploring the impact of a large brain, tool use, complex social structures and more. It is massively engaging and continuously interesting. It is a brilliant, thought-provoking odyssey through human history with its huge confident brush strokes painting enormous scenarios across time. I much enjoyed Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
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