I am back to writing, after a hiatus of 5 years! How that happened is a separate story. I just finished reading Sapiens and I do recommend it highly even though I have a mixed opinion overall, due to one specific chapter in the book.
Sapiens is a well researched work on the human history and taking you through the evolution from chimps 6 M years ago to the modern human. In between, there are exciting stories of the evolution in Africa, stone tools, Neanderthals, fire, languages, agriculture, kingdoms, empire, money, industrial revolution. Finally, there is a chapter on the present and the future. Given that we are not absolutely certain why things panned out in a specific way, the author has carefully called out facts, best guesses, or speculations in the text. Reading the book was like reading the history text book from school, except that there was requirement to commit all dates and names to memory :).
Even though Dr Harari managed to keep me latched on through the first 400+ pages, the modern history is very selective in its presentation. While the racism and civil movements in USA get a fair bit of attention, the world was declared war-free since 1945, overlooking the Indo-China war in 1962 and Indo-Pak war in 1965 (leading to creation of Bangaldesh). Maybe these were not deemed significant enough. But even the unification of most of India under Maurya/Ashoka dynasty is not given much attention. The rise of terrorism gets only a passing mention. Probably it was a deliberate attempt to keep the details of last few centuries at par with the space given to each millennium in the text. Or maybe, the recent human history is better known already. Also, the last couple of chapters are more speculative in nature and at least for me, the chain of thought was broken, from soaking in history to what sounded philosophical. It would have been best if there was some heads up in the text that we were now moving from historical facts to philosophy. The very last chapter attempts to identify possible scenarios for the future and borrows heavily from science fiction. Again, this is very difficult to get right, so the less said about that, the better.
Overall, I throughly enjoyed reading the book. History is always good to know, and to learn from. We sincerely do not want to repeat the mistake of Incas by welcoming aliens in the future. The text on dairy farming mechanization was an eye opener - I had no idea that animals are being so brutally tortured to put the daily breakfast on the table for humans. Another food for thought, is the experiments being done on other species to discover better cures. Is it morally right? Dr Harari raises the questions for the reader to ponder over and provides arguments from the different points of views. Definitely some thinking to be done here.
