Where do we come from? Our insatiable curiosity about our origins has provoked a raft of different answers to that question. Was the invention of cooking the reason for mans evolutionary success or was our facility for culture the key? Was the progress of humanity driven by kindness; or by warfare and aggression? Did our earliest ancestors live in promiscuous communes, as depicted in Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethás bestselling Sex at Dawn? Or in respectable monogamy, as argued in Lynn Saxons less successful Sex at Dusk? One of the charms of Yuval Noah Hararis Sapiens is that it avoids such simplistic explanations. Instead, it offers a bravura retelling of the human story seasoned with more personal reflections on mans tenancy of the planet. The books surface is brilliantly clear, witty and erudite but its underlying message is dark.
Harari organises humankind around four different milestones. About 70,000 years ago, the cognitive revolution kickstarted our history, and about 12,000 years ago the agricultural revolution speeded it up. Then came a long process of unifying mankind and colonising the Earth until, finally, the scientific revolution began about 500 years ago. It is still in progress and may yet finish us all off.
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