Summary Study Guide Sapiens : a Brief History of Humankind

First published in Hebrew in 2011, with the English translation following in 2014, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind examining the shaping of human history. Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari shines a light, sometimes harshly, on how humans have exploited the ideas of capitalism, religion, and politics to control the globe and put the species Homo sapiens on the threshold of banishing natural selection. Sapiens landed on the New York Times best-seller list and won the National Library of China’s Wenjin Book Award for best book published in 2014. In 2019, Sapiens won the Academic Book Week Book of the Year award as part of the UK’s Academic Book Trade Conference Awards.Harari describes the development of the human species across an evolutionary framework from the earliest stages through to the present day and concludes by sharing some sweeping predictions for our future. During the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago), Homo sapiens developed cognitive abilities that surpassed other humans of the age. The Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago) brought about humans’ domestication of plants and animals, and the Scientific Revolution (500 years ago) ushered in an era of exploration, science, and capitalism that defines today’s societies. The Industrial Revolution (200 years ago) transformed and fashioned Homo sapiens, the only remaining human species, into what they are today…