Yuval Harari:

The Israeli historian Yuval Harari begins by mentioning three revolutions that shaped human history: the Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, and the Scientific Revolution 500 years ago (presumably this one includes the more famous Industrial Revolution). The first part of his "brief history" is highly speculative. He starts by focusing on what is unique about humans, and for each of these unique features he derives consequences on the history of humans. For example, humans walk upright on two legs, a fact that in his opinion required narrower hips and therefore increased the chances of women dying in childbirth, a fact which in turn favored women who gave birth to premature babies, a fact which explains why human babies are born so helpless, depending for many years on their parents for protection and food. Harari thinks that because babies are born so immature they can be educated, whereas all other animals die the way they were born. Humans also have a very large brain, a fact that Harari credits to fire. 300,000 years ago humans invented fire, which allowed humans to cook vegetables like wheat, rice and potatoes, and made it easier to digest food, and killed germs; and this allowed humans to evolve shorter intestines which allowed more energy to be devoted to the brain which allowed brains to get bigger. Humans are also good at tool-making and at creating social networks.

Despite all these advantages, humans remained a relatively minor animal for two million years. Between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago humans came up with several important inventions, besides the first forms of art (which he identifies as the Stadel lion-man of 32,000 years ago) and with myths and religions. This is the time of the Cognitive Revolution. Most scholars credit a random genetic mutation.

Harari argues that human language, so complex compared with other animal communication systems, evolved for gossiping and for informing; but human language is also unique in that it is used to talk about things that do not exist, like myths, or that one cannot touch/see/smell/etc, like nation, money and law, and Harari credits "myths" for the propensity of humans to collaborate with strangers: collective imagination is what makes possible large-scale cooperation.

Cultural evolution sped up evolution compared with genetic evolution: humans are able to pass on changes in behavior to the next generation without having to wait for genetic change.

The dog is the first animal domesticated by humans, probably for its usefulness as an alarm system, 5,000 years before the domestications of the Agricultural Revolution.

Harari points out the paradox of the Agricultural Revolution. The life of the hunter-gatherer was generally better than the stressful life of the person living in an agricultural society: not only more natural, but also easier and safer (many diseases spread by animals and epidemics spread by other humans were unlikely before humans started living in agricultural societies with domesticated animals). Starvation was rare among foragers, but frequent among farmers. Farmers had to work harder than foragers. Foragers had a healthier and more varied diet whereas farmers tended to eat only what they grew. The transition to agriculture is so irrational that Harari claims that it was wheat, rice and potatoes that domesticated humans, not viceversa. More wheat meant more food per unit of land and therefore a larger human population. This caused a population explosion. Agriculture's paradox: "more people alive under worse circumstances"

The foragers already altered the ecosystem before the invention of agriculture. The first seafaring societies appeared in Indonesia about 45,000 years ago. When humans arrived in Australia, they caused a mass extinction of the megafauna and of bird species. Humans altered the ecosystem by favoring some plants over others, which in turn favored some animals over others. Humans arrived in America 16,000 years ago from Siberia, perhaps chasing big animals like mammoths, and within 4,000 years humans had already spread to the southernmost tip of South America: again, the arrival of humans caused the extinction of many animals. Harari sees a pattern: wherever humans emigrated, within a few centuries mass extinctions happened. And this took place even before the Agricultural Revolution.

The Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago started in Turkey, Iran and the Levant. It appears that it happened independently in different parts of the world. In 9500 BC in a place called Gobekli Tepe hunter-gatherers built a temple and nearby wheat cultivation was already happening. Harari wonders if wheat may have been cultivated to feed the many people who built the temple, i.e. if building the temple was the real motive, and the farming village came later.

Humans spread around the world and, wherever they went, they favored the multiplication of their favorite domesticated animals, again thus altering the environment.

After the Agricultural Revolution, humans started worrying about the future.

Then came the age of empires. Myths sustained empires, and myths survive and are spread by education. Numbers were invented (in India), writing was invented (by Sumerians). "Imagined orders" and scripts allowed humans to create mass-cooperation networks. All societies are based on "imagine hierarchies".

In passing, Harari points out that we claim that all humans are created equal, and fight racism and gender discrimination, but then we accept that some people are rich and some are poor.

Harari spends a few pages discussing why almost all societies are patriarchal (including those that were "discovered" after 1492. Physical strength is not the main factor because usually physical work is delegated to the lower classes, not the ruling classes, and there are plenty of animals stronger than humans. If women needed protection and help during pregnancy, they could have as well found it in other women. The success of the human race depends on its ability to cooperate with others, but women seem to be better at it than men. Harari also points out that today women are rapidly becoming equal to men with no visible damage to human civilization. So what exactly is the reason that men ended up being the dominant gender? Harari doesn't have an answer, just points out the paradox.

Harari repeats a few times another paradox: that "every man-made order is packed with contradictions". Humans value freedom and equality, but one clearle comes at the expense of the other. Cognitive dissonance is an asset, a skill: human civilization depends on that skill.

Harari takes another detour to emphasize that human civilization, originally fragmented, is moving towards global unity. This is due only in part to the success of empires like the Mongol and the British empires. Harari points out that the first universal order was money, accepted throughout large regions: the market of a business is potentially the entire world. Then political order tried to impose universal order: every person is potentially a subject of the empire. Then religion tried the same: all people are potential believers in a religion.

A chapter deals with money. Harari points out that the Indios of America were puzzled that Europeans were so interested in gold. Gold was a material to make jewelry and art but it had no further value for the natives. However, it was the most precious thing for Europeans. Harari points out that gold is just a rock. Its value is artificial. Money was invented as a universal medium of exchange and as a way to store and transport wealth. Money relies in trust: it is just a coin or a piece of paper until an entire population trusts that it also represents wealth. The first money, like barley among the Sumerians, had an inherent value, but today's money has no inherent value unless we trust that its value is what it is written on it. That revolution took place around 2500 BC in Mesopotamia when silver money was invented (coins were introduced in 640 BC in Lydia). Today everybody, regardless of the language they speak and the god they worship, believes in gold and silver.

As far as empires go, Harari views Sargon's Akkadian Empire as the first "universal" empire, an empire that claimed to rule the entire world, and Cyrus' Persian Empire as the first that claimed to rule the entire world for the sake of all people, an idea later borrowed by Alexander, by the Romans, by the Muslim caliphs and by the British Empire.

Harari's obsevations on empires are intriguing. The British treated Indians like inferior people, but united a variety of political entities into one nation that to this day its people recognize as one. Besides political and economic integration, the British left behind a national language (English) and a form of government (democracy). Indians have never asked to go back to pre-British India, fragmented into dozens of states, none of which was democratic. Harari has a point that whatever preexisted an empire's invasion was itself the result of some other invasion. Criticizing an empire for the way it harmed the pre-existent culture is a way to praise the pre-existent culture, which in reality simply harmed or even obliterated the pre-existing one. There are no saints in history.

Religion, the third great unifier in history, at some point became monotheistic. Harari points out that monotheists have generally been more fanatical than polytheists. Monotheism has conquered all of Europe, Asia and America, plus western Asia. Only India, China and the Far East have largely remained polytheistic. Harari also recognizes dualistic religions, starting with Zoroaster: an evil power and the good god are fighting a cosmic battle. Harari points out that monotheists actually incorporate both dualist and polytheist concepts: the devil and the saints.

Harari argues that the Agricultural Revolution changed the way humans perceive animals and plants. Animist cultures granted them a spiritual value, whereas farmers only saw them as food. This is dubious since the hunter-gatherer was no less prone to see them as food.

Harari then introduces another category of religions: natural-law religions, i.e. religions that don't care about gods but believe in a natural law. An early one was Buddhism: Buddha listed a series of natural laws to achieve liberation, and those are independent of gods. Harari considers liberalism, communism (whose natural law is explained in Marx's "Capital"), and capitalism as natural-law religions. They have their prophets, their holy books and their martyrs.

A sub-category consists of humanist religions, that elevate Homo Sapiens over everything else. Liberalism is such a humanistic religion, grounded on the belief of individual freedom, and socialism is another humanistic religion, grounded on the belief of universal equality. Another one is evolutionary humanism, which believes in natural evolution and survival of the fittest, best represented by Hitler's nazism. Nazism was ideologically opposed to liberalism and communism because these two ideologies allowed and even helped unfit individuals to survive and proliferate. While today there seems to be universal condemnation of evolutionary humanism, Harari points out that using biology to create a superhuman is not all too different from what Hitler had in mind.

Harari then discusses the scientific revolution, and in particular why it happened in Europe rather than in China or India. He starts by arguing that the scientific revolution was not about knowledge but about ignorance. The traditional view was that all wisdom was contained in ancient classics and in religious scriptures. Knowing something was just a matter of understanding what the classics and the scriptures already contained. The scientific revolution started when Europeans confronted the obvious fact that some things were simply unknown, and only observation and experimentation could reveal them. Harari thinks that Columbus' trip was crucial for developing this viewpoint. This new approach also changed the way knowledge was represented. Traditionally, knowledge was in narrative form. The scientific revolution used the mathematical form. Newton showed that Nature is run by mathematical laws. A few decades before Newton, Bacon in "The New Instrument" made the connection between science and technology when he stated that "knowledge is power". This led to the idea of progress: by discovering something new, power increased. The traditional view was instead that the golden age was in the past, and, at best, a society could regain the wisdowm that had been lost.

After emphasizing the rapid progress of science and technology, Harari speculates that we may indeed solve the problem of all problems: death. And become immortal.

Harari argues that science would not exist without colluding with politics and money. Scientific research is supported by an ideology and the ideology decides what to do with the outcome of research.

Harari never uses the word "curiosity" but pays tribute to European curiosity. Harari mentions that Europeans quickly knew more about the ancient Middle East than the people who lived there, that they knew more about India than the Indians. He credits the European ambition to explore and conquer, and the European idea that the unknown is attractive... but doesn't quite explain where this mindset comes from. Europeans came to sincerely believe that they were doing the conquered people a favor by exporting to them superior knowledge.

Europeans coupled science, imperialism and capitalism, and therefore made science more efficient. Harari credits the European empires for this marriage. Europeans also embraced "credit", a way to create wealth in the future that doesn't exist in the present, and he credits this to the scientific revolution not because the scientific revolution invented credit but because the very idea of "progress" is required in order to embrace credit: credit becomes commonplace only when the chances that the future will be better than the present are high. Harari explains how Adam Smith's theory of capitalism emerged from the mindset of the Scientific Revolution. The increase in profits of private investor is necessary for the increase in wealth for everybody. The selfish human urge to make money is good for the whole society. My wealth is also your wealth. Greed is good (contrary to Christian values). And so the Scientific Revolution indirectly caused a "business revolution" that made the business people more important than the aristocracy: the aristocracy was content with enjoying their wealth, whereas the business people reinvested their wealth and increased it. The business people are also the ones who looked at science for new ideas on how to make money, and the ones who invested in science. Because science has produced more and more inventions, human society has become richer and richer.

Harari treats Columbus like a pioneer of the startup. He pitched his idea to many "venture capitalists" until the queen of Spain gave him money. He then tried and almost failed, but eventually succeeded, and the investor (Spain) made huge money out of his crazy idea. Unfortunately for Spain, the Spanish royalty kept behaving like the aristocracy and didn't further invest in the "startup" concept. It was the Dutch and the English who did so. Their empires were created by private enterprise, by merchants funded by investors and looking for profit, not by the state.

He views the Industrial Revolution as basically an "energy revolution": human society learned how to convert one type of energy into another, and the classic example is the steam engine. The Industrial Revolution yielded a large amount of cheap energy, which was then used to extract a large amount of cheap raw materials, which were then used to make consumer goods. And this led to the Consumer Society: the production of goods makes sense only if enough people buy those goods, regardless of whether they need them or not. Harari here makes a really good point: before the Industrial Revolution, the aristocracy was wasting money on unnecessary goods, and after the Industrial Revolution it's ordinary people who waste money on unnecessary goods.

Harari also emphasizes that the the Industrial Revolution was also (and in the USA first and foremost) another Agricultural Revolution because it "industrialized" agriculture. Here Harari spends a few pages lamenting the fate of millions of animals, who has raised, kept captive and slaughtered in assembly lines.

Another dreadful consequence of the Industrial Revolution was the collapse of the traditional community of the traditional family, replace by the growing support system provided by the state.

Other animals clearly did not benefit from human progress. Harari mentions again that, if we include animals, then the Industrial Revolution has been "the greatest crime in history".

At this point Harari abandons history and discusses happiness: has progress made people happier? Harari feels that historians spent a lot of time detailing what kings and generals did, but failed to study whether events made people happier or not. Harari views happiness as originating from comparing yourself with your contemporaries, not with your predecessors. And so it doesn't matter that you are ten times richer than your great-grandfather if your neighbor is a little richer than you. Any kind of progress will lead to unhappiness for all those who cannot get it right away because they will envy those who get it right away. One way to achieve universal happiness is to realize the dystopia of Huxley's "Brave New World", i.e. to give everybody every day a hallucinogenic pill. If that makes everybody happy all the time, Harari asks "why not"? And doesn't answer.

Harari thinks that happiness is when one perceives his life as being meaningful and worthwhile, but the definition of "meaningful" has changed over the centuries, and so Harari points out that "meaningful" is a "delusion": happiness depends on self-delusion. He finds a better route to happiness in Buddhist meditation. According to Buddhism happiness depends on neither external conditions nor inner feelings.

The closing chapter is, inevitably, about the fact that humans are becoming gods: "intelligent design" (which believers often claim as proof that there must be a God) is happening now that humans can create life and intelligence. Human technology is replacing natural selection with intelligent design, where "intelligent design" is the working of our brain. He speculates that technology may eventually cause the emergence of a new race, sort of superhumans, and the way he puts makes the reader wonder if we should really worry about what will happen to that new superhuman species: do we worry about what will happen to spiders or whales? Harari closes with more philosophical thoughts about the human condition: we fundamental problem is that we are a powerful species that doesn't know what it wants, and, as it engineers an even more powerful species, doesn't even know what it wants to want.