One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.
People of the Internet really love to hate this book. And, after only one reading, I couldn't have said that.
I first came to Sapiens sometime in 2015, well before the hype, the blockbuster success, and the legacy. At the start, I'd have said (and did say) there were problems, but I would have said (and did say) that I could see why it's such a runaway hit. And, it's not all bad! Good and bad, it's terrific for sparking good conversations, like some of the kinds of conversations I love to have. It's why I agreed to teach with it. Because of that course I co-taught for several spring semesters, I've now read Sapiens eight times (this being my ninth and final reading). Given my over-exposure to the book (which could surely ruin many a book, even a beloved one), and given all my problems with it, I still would not, and could not, say I hate it.
My whole experience with Sapiens has been a net gain for me. A big one. During all this time I have been learning so much about how human evolution is sensed in the world, and how far removed that is from what the science has actually shown us, and from what we can actually know. And I have been relentlessly encouraged, by reading after reading, semester after semester, to figure out why that is and whether we could do anything about that massive disconnect between make-believe and reality.
It's been an incredibly rewarding period of my life, humming and thrumming with conversations, arguments, and the endless consumption of books and articles, from the magnificent to the magnificently awful. It's been and continues to be transcendent. Sapiens has been an important part of all this, so I have to hand it to Harari for really going for it. Sapiens is peak holding make-believe in one hand while raising up science in the other. With Sapiens we are given the best opportunity we've ever had to see the consequences of so much storytelling in science and beyond.
So, I cannot and will never say I hate this book. I will also never tell anyone not to read it. Because of the critical imperative, however, if people do read it, then I encourage them to read it among others, in conversation, with a friend or classmates, or perhaps with this blog. Sapiens will suck you in and sweep you off your feet, but the moment you try to talk about it with others, you will realize something. By reframing common sense, it has the disorienting effect of pulling the rug out from under the reader. And that can make the reader vulnerable, available, and keen to find their footing in its pages.
And, as we've seen so far and as we'll keep seeing, what is offered in Sapiens isn't necessarily what's good, or right, or true. It's just one man's perspective. But it's presented as if it's so much more than that--the word "omniscient" comes to mind, so does Donna Haraway's "god trick"--and so it sounds so good, or so right, or so true. I'm not saying he's doing anything new. Many scientists and scholars who are far more familiar with the evidence of human evolution have already done and still do what he is doing. However, I don't think anyone has done it better than Harari.
And so, I'm reviewing Sapiens one page at at time...
Page 8
Leading up to page 8, we read about how the genus Homo evolved from australopiths (those upright apes that include Lucy) around 2.5 million years ago. That's how everyone narrates the fact that the earliest fossil that's been labeled Homo dates to about then. That's fine. Starting around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus begin to be found not just in Africa anymore but in Europe, Asia, and southeast Asia. So he's good there, too. (It's not easy to talk about these boring details in a breezy, pithy way that's also incredibly accurate and precise. If you want to see it done properly, go take a nap inside any Paleoanthropology textbook!)
But then it gets chronologically murky as he introduces Neanderthals, later Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (the "hobbits" of relatively recent Flores, Indonesia), and fossils from the Denisova Cave in Siberia. If you're familiar with these things, then we're in the phase that spans from about 300,000 to 50,000 years ago. But then at the top of page 8, things get wrong.
It reads, "While these humans were evolving in Europe and Asia, evolution in East Africa did not stop,": TRUE
"the cradle of humanity continued to nurture numerous new species, such as Homo rudolfensis, 'Man from Lake Rudolf', Homo ergaster, 'Working Man', and eventually our own species, which we've immodestly named Homo sapiens, 'Wise Man'.": NOT TRUE.
Homo rudolfensis and Homo ergaster don't overlap at all with Neanderthals, Denisovans, hobbits, later Homo erectus. So, no, those more ancient hominins from around 2 million years ago in Africa were not doing their thing while Neanderthals etc were doing theirs elsewhere.
"While these humans [Neanderthals, later erectus, Denisovans, and hobbits] were evolving in Europe and Asia," guess who was in the cradle of humanity?
Only Homo sapiens and some weirdos that were discovered since Sapiens was published. These are hominis over which my students are losing their minds, and with such enthusiasm and consternation that I've just basically turned my paleo course into a Homo naledi course.
The bones of these surprisingly small-brained bipeds were found in an underground cave system in South Africa and date so recently (to around 230,000 years ago). You may already know all abou tthem from Netflix's Cave of Bones documentary.
But I digress!
The problem with Harari's muffed chronology makes it seem like there is profound gap between what's happening to hominins inside Africa versus outside Africa in the last few hundred thousand years. When I look at the fossil and archaeological record, I don't see one. I'm not saying he does either, but it's an implication of the mistake on this page.
And you might say, who cares about the mistakes, the point he was trying to make stands as correct. Yes, you're right. He's basically right to say that, "from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago,* the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species."
(*Although I do wonder about that 10,000 years ago date. Like, I have no idea where that's coming from. We don't actually know the point in time when sapiens were the only ones left. And suggesting that non-sapiens hominins were around 10,000 years ago is to suggest what would be blockbuster science news. Just epic. It's not impossible and may well be true, but we don't have those fossils. Maybe he was thinking about the old date for the hobbits. He may have been going off the original dates that had them lasting until around that time. That must be it! But now the date has been pushed back to 50,000. Okay, it's all good. We can let that go.)
Right. There were many hominins in the past besides Homo sapiens, and many were alive on the Earth at the same time and some were even in the same place. Exactly how many there were can be debated into infinity because these are labels or boundaries on variation that people make up about organisms whose sex lives were not streamed or recorded. But some fossils really are too distinct to lump together, like the robust australopiths who overlapped in time and space with Homo erectus.
At the end of making this point we learn why he's making this point. He's teasing us that the fact that we are alone, now, may be "incriminating" and says that "as we will shortly see, we sapiens have good reasons to repress the memory of our siblings."
It's a real page turner, isn't it?
And look how, just after creation we're killing our siblings. From Eve to Cain and Abel. Just building the case that this is intentionally grabbing the myth-making by the horns.
And on that note, there's one last thing.
He goes to all the trouble to define "human" in the prior pages, only to lob an undefined "man" on page 8. "Man" conjures the myth-ness of it all, the numinous, if you will, of the evolutionary perspective, doesn't it? Oh, c'mon. Maybe this is a translation issue. He wrote the original in Hebrew. But have you been listening to how people talk about human evolution? The moment they're referring to people or humans in an evolutionary context (instead of, say, in a dorm room or basketball or coffeehouse context) my students will often speak of "man". It's never not wild to hear it in a contemporary scholarly or scientific context, but hearing it from young people is a whole other experience. Sometimes I think they're stepping into traditional language to give the ideas gravitas, or to signal "I'm talking about evolution now." But it just sounds like they're glazing over and reciting dutifully from the evolution Bible: Origin of Species + Descent of Man.
Oh boy, I let this one get away from me. Let's wrap up.
You may have already shouted, "So, what if he gets the timing of the species wrong as long as the point that there were lots of hominins until recently gets across to readers?!?"
No, no. This is not a so what. This is a pattern now, since pages 6-7. The basics aren't solid here. Shouldn't they be?
Look. Human evolution belongs to everyone. Everyone has the right to it. So everyone has the right to write about it. The trouble is that, as I've been saying, that Sapiens is the world's favorite human evolution book. It's sold millions of copies and has been translated into 65 languages. He's a scholar. He has authority. Sapiens is shelved with the science books, as a science book.
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