This widely heralded book by an Israeli professor is nothing less than a history of the human race. It combines anthropology, archeology, history, sociology, and philosophy not only to tell how we came to be (and when), but to explore why we became the dominant species on earth.
There is much here that is fascinating. For example, we typically think of humans as having been around for a long time, but Harari explains what the most recent archeological research has shown, which is that Homo Sapiens only appeared and replaced all the other earlier human species within the relatively short time period of the past 70,000 years.
During that time, we invented government, agriculture, writing, science and other “force multipliers” that extended the reach of humanity’s power over the natural world and other species, by harnessing the collective resources of large numbers of us in pursuit of goals set by the much smaller number of people who emerged as leaders down through the ages.
A delightful read that provides much food for thought, by looking behind the curtain of our evolution and history as a species, in order to explain how things came to be the way they are. Highly recommended.
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