Sapiens, Ch. 5: "We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us."

We did not? 

It did? 

Without thumbs?

This is the next post in my ninth and final journey through the book Sapiens. 

We are in Chapter 5: History's Biggest Fraud, and have arrived at one of the most memorable moments in the book: not only are we domesticated animals, but wheat did this to us. So... no matter how we may control our diets, we will never truly be gluten-free!

Not a problem if we are "gluten full".

Wheat and all of agriculture, it's a trap, Harari says. And this chapter--with all its lamenting the loss of free-time and belittling the wits of farmers--echoes Marshall Sahlins' "original affluent society" and Jared Diamond's "the worst idea in the history of human history."

Here we are, then. This thing that we need to live and, for those of us who love pizza, that makes life worth living... is THE WORST. Suddenly, the familiar is strange and who doesn't love that? 

I've heard someone compare the experience of reading Sapiens to so many weed-enhanced dorm room conversations. Like, Do you think that your blue is the same blue as mine or have we just agreed, externally, out there, that that's blue. Like, for a moment, if you could see the blue I see, through my eyes and with my brain, would you still see your blue or would it be something else? Would it be a whole other color you've never seen??? (... which reminds me to share this fun story)

Nothing against drugs, per se, but I wish more people knew that you can have some pretty trippy thoughts without them. 

And when you have such thoughts, you might find that reading, "We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us..." leads to the realization that it's just as untrue as it accuses common sense of being. 

This chapter is a pretty compelling case against anyone's imagination who insists on the intentional invention and implementation of wheat domestication. It's a pretty compelling account of how humans passively came to rely on agriculture, scaling it up to what we have now. 

Anyone who is reading Sapiens should definitely also read The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow (or "The Davids" as our seniors in last year's anthropology seminar liked to say). Theirs is a wonderful consideration of agriculture's early days according to some eye-opening archaeological sites and I really don't think anyone should be reading Sapiens without also taking in another point of view, such as theirs which doesn't necessarily refute Harari's but also doesn't match it.

Even from Sapiens, alone, a reader can come away with two truths. From the present view, it's true that "we domesticated wheat" but from a ground-level, imaginary perspective about how it actually happened, it's also true that "we did not domesticate wheat." And, for different reasons, we can say, that "wheat domesticated us." Or not. But it's just not true that things were one way (common sense about who domesticated whom) or the other (Sapiens' bong rips). So, once again, Sapiens has raised some intriguing questions and inspired brilliant conversations (at least among my co-professor and students).

But, once again, there is a but: it's maddening because Harari seems to claim, as a rhetorical strategy, or does claim (hard to know the difference) some "facts" that are simply not knowable, scientifically, and therefore cannot be the scientific truth. And, once again, that wouldn't be so maddening if this weren't a "science book." 

And another thing. Who is this "we" who did or did not domesticate wheat? It's certainly not any of us writing or reading this blog post. When we call all of our ancestors "we", what are we doing exactly?

I can think of a few answers to that question... 

1. We are taking credit for their lives and internalizing that as some kind of human nature.

2. We are taking blame for their lives and internalizing that as some kind of human nature.

3. We are drawing a line across space-time about who is included in "we" and, therefore, who is not.

Ahhhh. And if we buy the evolutionary psychology presented as fact in Sapiens (for example, see nearly every prior post), then #3 is simply "we" doing what "we" so-called tribal, "xenophobic," and "us vs. them" sapiens evolved to do. 

It’s funny. We (heh) will say, “We put a man on the moon.” But we never say, “We painted the Mona Lisa”. It’s like, as soon as it’s a group project, it’s “we” even if “we” only contributed pennies of our taxes to it. Even if we weren’t old enough to pay taxes in 1969. Even if we weren’t even born yet in 1969. 

And in the group project called existence (a.k.a. evolution) that preceded ours, “we” played no role.  So it’s even more strange to refer to our hominin ancestors, even just our sapiens ancestors, as “we”. What are "we" doing?

Maybe it’s just me. I’m immersed in evolutionary thinking. And, go back far enough in time and everything’s origins are the same. It’s far beyond Darwin’s insights about relatedness, this entire universe is one big “we.”

You could say I took evolutionary thinking a little too far there and that I could just keep it to Earth. Fine, but then I could say that extending "we" too far back is far worse: it's forgetting evolution is true. 

Evolution is true. So, why make ourselves prisoners of the past, but even worse…why make ourselves prisoners of a make-believe one? Why call our ancestors, whom we can only know in very limited ways, “we”. We are not them any more than they are us. Or… if we are going to be them, which we are if we are so large, then THEY ARE US. Which means what?

They were just living in their time. Like we are. They could have been like us, now, but because of their context, they weren’t. So even if we knew they were murderous rapists, which we can’t, but even if we did, which they probably weren’t because it doesn’t’ sound like a recipe for existence, but even if they were, then that was then, only then. I mean, I’ve got some German ancestry, should I worry if any of their descendants were Nazis? As if any of that says something about me?

I don’t even call my mom “we”, so why would my distant ancestors I never even knew be "we" to me?

Calm down.

When we were fishes. That's normal stuff.

When we were cavemen. Normal stuff, too.

When we were our mothers. That's nowhere.

But.

If "we" used to be fish, if we insist on referring to our ancestors as "we" then we used to be our mothers, too. And Shakespeare! And anyone who came before.

So, we are our mothers? We are Shakespeare?

We used to be early wheat cultivators, and not? 

We used to be enslavers and slaves?  

Hey. No. 

You never hear a white American say, "We used to be slaves."

And you never hear a man say, "We used to be women" or a woman say, "we used to be men." 

But if "we" are our ancestors, then men are women and women are men and free people are both slaves and enslavers.

I’m all twisted up over “we” because I believe that identifying with only some of our ancestry (whose behaviors are largely made-up fantasies) keeps us from realizing our magnificent potential. 

Instead, here we are, where no man was ever a woman and no woman was ever a man. And so we get patriarchy's desperate power grabs like POTUS's executive order, DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDERIDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. 

How did I wind up complaining about patriarchy in a post about the origins of wheat domestication? 

Maybe because it's all about the bread. All of our modern context (wealth first and foremost...having it, not having it, and how aspirations, oppressions, and desperations shape life) might be far more powerful in shaping "common sense" that goes into how humans evolved (including "wheat domesticated us"), even in the minds of brilliant scientists than we realize. 

Who am I kidding? I don't believe it "might be"... I believe it absolutely is. Why else would "we" keep believing what "we" imagine about our ancestors, like their tribalism and their gender roles are just the facts about our evolved human nature--that oxymoronic view that imputes the (unobservable) biology of our ancestors into us now, unchanged. Evolutionary psychology feels like another trap, doesn't it?

But, to so many people, evolutionary psychology is the only way to accept evolution's truth. They believe that "we" are simply trapped with what "human nature" we 100% imagine we inherited from our Plio-Pleistocene ancestors. Here we are, in this modern world, where our in-born, programmed bio-psychology that once boosted humanity's survival and reproduction is, now, unnaturally depleted by boner-killing feminists. 

Peace love dope!

Just getting revved up for chapters to come, I suppose. Chapters 6 and 7 are next. To be continued... 

Sapiens, Ch. 4: "Don't believe tree-huggers"

My endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time is now advancing one chapter at a time. 

This one's about recent large animal extinctions. Sapiens says sapiens are to blame.

So, says Harari, "Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature." But the same (supposed) scientific reasoning could also just as easily say, Don't believe this chapter.

Chapter 4 is pithy. It's convincing. It's fascinating. It's turned the familiar storytelling into a satisfying sort of axe-grinding against any shred of love, pride, etc. for humanity we may have left--that horrified, self-loathing, whole-body embrace, so expertly crafted by the algorithm, that, before you know it, sucks an hour or much more out of living your life that day, everyday. That, whatever that is that's encapsulated in Don't believe tree-huggers, is what's happening by the end of chapter 4 and, well, that's the kind of humanity-hating pit of despair I actively avoid.

Not saying I'm virtuous to do so. Maybe it's selfish. And it probably warps my view of most things, especially my, perhaps, overly critical views of human evolutionary storytelling. 

But what can I say... I live in this world. There's no denying this world. Humans are destroying each other and the planet.  But do I really need to dwell on what I cannot control? 

And I happen to believe that human evolutionary storytelling, especially the narrative of Sapiens itself, including chapter 4, is complicit in that destruction. 

Stories about who we are, how we evolved, are not mere stories. We enact them against each other and the planet... including through inaction. 

No, I'm not talking about leaving the water running while whe brush our teeth, or rescinding our pledge of five bucks a month to the Jane Goodall Institute, or being un-neighborly in person to our neighbors, or voting in elections with fear and violence instead of hope and justice. By inaction I'm mainly referring to people with hoards of money and power who are overwhelmingly failing to use it for good and who are actively preventing those without it to do much good of our own. 

Sapiens, with its compelling and Bible-adjacent evolutionary psychological narrative, sure provides a nice excuse to look the other way at what humans are doing to each other and the planet, to keep going just as we are, or to feel powerless in the face of large evolutionary forces. This is the nihilism laced through the pages that many readers feel intensely despite many readers feeling exhilaration and the numinous. Maybe people can feel all those things in one book.

Can I? Have I? Maybe once, back when I first read Catcher in the Rye. By the second time, I felt none of those things--only irritation and empathy for my teenaged self. But, also, a glimmer of fuck-you pride that what got me into reading books outside of school was the fact that somewhere someone banned them.

Sapiens didn't need to be banned to be a smash hit. Though I'm sure it's banned somewhere. Maybe Turkey, which used to love science, but then, well, I should talk... look who's Turkey now. 

[Note, added later: It's banned in Afghanistan.]

Regardless, here we are with this smash hit. By Chapter 4, humans haven't even invented the wheel but already they're wreaking havoc on the planet.  

Is this true? Yes and no. Is asking whether or not Harari's claims are true the approach we're going to take with Chapter 4? Yes and no. Is it any use to ask yourself questions if you can't answer them with either yes or no? Yes and no?

While I used to follow the literature on large animal extinctions, especially those lost since the origin and dispersal of Homo sapiens, I lost my grip on the latest and greatest long ago. 

That's no thanks, in large part, to the proliferation of academic publications, especially if you are a generalist. In this outrageous new world, here is what being an academic can feel like: 

"I think we're fighting a losing game!": https://youtu.be/T1n7H5YpfFo?si=8_g1VcqEU6uCkeFJ 

While the candy was still coming at a manageable pace, I believe this was the last article relevant to Ch. 4 that I read! 

But my out of date-ness isn't really the root problem. As usual, the problem is about the presentation of the facts, as if the interpretations are also the facts, as if we're really so certain about past causes, effects, conditions, and events that the narrative of Sapiens relies upon.

It's really hard, no, it's impossible to know if a species (like the wooly mammoth) disappeared long ago due to the long ago, unpreserved behavior of another long ago species (like Homo sapiens). 

Even when there is an historical record, it's a challenge to link an animal's extinction to human cause! Consider the dodo. We love to imagine that humans did it, but it's possible that humans merely finished them off while they were already on their way out.

So, because of how hard it is, no, how impossible it is to know if sapiens of 45,000 years ago caused another species to go extinct, then here's what I see when I read Chapter 4: 

I see an author who is continuing to make an argument about human nature by continuing to wield science in an unscientific way. He presents science as if it's capable of knowing what the author is claiming about human nature, but it is not. Even when Harari concedes that there are debates or that it's difficult or impossible to actually know X, Y, and Z, he's carrying on with his story. That's not science. And that wouldn't be a problem, necessarily, if this book were not on the science shelves and read by millions as a science book. 

I've read well-researched novels, full of science, that aren't on the science shelves. I've read well-researched science-fiction, full of science, that isn't on the science shelves. Fiction and science-fiction dig marvelously into, and reveal brilliant truths about, human nature. But nobody's calling any of that "science" and shelving it with "science"... why Sapiens? I don't have an answer right now. I'm flummoxed. I'm blocked. 

I'm the Underground Man?

“Why, of course, the laws of nature. The deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling. Accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in reality, one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow creatures, and that this conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have to just accept it. There is no help for it. For twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it. Upon my word, they will shout at you. It is no use protesting. It is a case of twice two makes four. Nature does not ask your permission. She has nothing to do with your wishes and whether you like her laws or dislike them you are bound to accept her as she is and consequently all her conclusions.”

—sarcastic narrator, Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky (Part 1, Chapter 3, about three-quarters of the way through)

Because I don't approach ancient history from the point of view of someone who is trying to define human nature--as, surprise!, exactly as it's always been defined by philosophers and religions in the European and American intellectual traditions and by pop culture right now--I'm not satisfied by Chapter 4. 

It's not as if he hasn't done any research for this Chapter. Like with the last chapter, the notes for Chapter 4 are heavy with citations to the anthropological and otherwise literature. 

But the narrative he provides can't help but paint sapiens as destructive and nowhere does he discuss what unintentional or even passive processes could have led to what we see as destructive consequences, now, to us being "the most destructive force the Animal Kingdom ever produced."

The last page of Chapter 3.

Let me try to say this better. He's interested in narrating humans, or sapiens, as an animal of significance (as opposed to one of "no significance" that we evolved from previously). And the "Cognitive Revolution" is what changed hominins from the former, no-significance state to the present state of significance. 

We're supposed to think this was like a phase change, like liquid to gas, which happens quickly and results in something that is very different from what it was just before, But, as we discussed in prior posts, what Harari sees as a sudden shift could be an illusion caused by the great limitation to what material can physically survive time intact. 

So... if we have no reason to believe that there was a sudden shift, as is crucial to the narrative of Sapiens, then the idea that sapiens are profoundly different from earlier forms is not necessarily one we must take up either. 

Why does this matter? It matters because  "The Flood" of Chapter 4 is referring to sapiens. Humans flooded the planet and devastated it like the Biblical flood. 

(I don't remember the Bible noting any extinctions and cannot be moved to check... Cuvier, to my knowledge, was one of the people to bring that interpretation to Genesis, to make sense of the mammoth and dinosaur bones he studied). 

In this stage of Harari's narrative, a flood of sapiens into new lands wiped out so many large terrestrial species who were naive to their ways, having never co-evolved with hominins like the savvier, grittier animals of Africa and Asia who did. 

But extinctions were also happening across Africa, Europe, and Asia while hominins were there, and Harari leaves those out. If a reader is new to any of this, a reader may mistakenly think that only animals in Australia, Madagascar, many many other islands, and the Americas were going extinct. Not the case. So how do we explain extinctions on the big continents that Harari has left out of the narrative? 

How would we know, in those places, if hominins were the cause or if hominins were the main cause or the most important cause compared to, say, climate change? 

With the extinctions in Africa, Europe, and Asia, we run into the same problems for the cases Harari uses. So why do his examples seem so much more hominin-caused, errr, sapiens-caused than the extinctions that happened along the way in Africa for all those millions of years that hominins were evolving there as "an animal of supposedly "no significance"? 

Is it because we refuse to let coincidences be mere coincidences when we cannot really know causes?

Like, what if climate change hits large species on islands faster or more intensely than it hits species on larger land masses? Australia is a large land mass. So is North and South America... But what about others... were there other extinctions going on in Africa, Asia, and Europe at the time? Could those be attributed to sapiens or climate change or neither or both? He doesn't go there at all. We're given no context. We're shown only what he shows us. It's easy to go along with the story he tells and there's nothing necessarily horribly wrong with it.  But thinking a bit about what he doesn't show us makes that story just a bit harder to accept as definitive.

And that's why the tree-hugger thing irritates me. He's clearly angry. As we learn on other pages, he's probably a vegetarian or vegan. He cares deeply about animals and about the planet. He's probably a tree-hugger! And so "Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature," is perhaps a bitter reckoning with old mistaken beliefs he held. Or perhaps we're sensing a spirit of blame. People are looking for people to blame for our current condition and for our powerlessness. Blaming sapiens who were evolved for destruction... maybe that feels good, especially if we're feeling desperate and powerless. But is that science?

In the last graf, Harari expresses the hope that if more people understood that sapiens caused these extinctions long ago then maybe they would be moved to do something about what we do to the planet right now. The flood is not over. Far from it. People are looking for reasons for hope, for knowledge to have the power that all our teachers told us it has. Believing them feels good, especially if we're feeling desperate and powerless. 

But is this the only way to look at the world and our place in it, and our responsibility for it? 

What does living in harmony with nature actually mean?

To Harari it means not causing any extinctions. 

Extinctions are constantly happening. To live in nature is to change, to be changed by context (including others), and to cause change in context (including others').

Change, including extinction, is the soundtrack. If that’s harmony or disharmony to a listener, then so be it.

So, if the tree-hugger thing is meant to stick it to people who don’t understand that life is constant change, then I can see where the snark is coming from. The frustration. And he’s concerned. See last graf, below, and more to come in Chapter 5! 

But we don’t know if any of what sapiens wrought on their ecosystems was actually destruction. Okay, the fires. But was it egregious? Gratuitous? Or was it survival? Were they killing more than they needed? We have no way of knowing. If they weren’t then we can say they were living in harmony with nature, as nature is a pull and push, constantly. Stasis isn’t life. Eco-relationships, overtime, are in flux. I'm guessing more than a few tree-huggers know this. I doubt all of them believe nothing evolves and expect no change in lineages resulting in no change in relationships between them and no changes in the ecosystem. 

If sapiens weren’t taking more than they needed then where does the outrage go? 

Could we even write chapter 4 like Harari did? He was able to write it like this because we cannot know if they were wantonly destructive or ... instead... living in harmony the only way they could as a species with a big hungry brain. 

It’s possible that they took what big brains need to live. It's possible we're seeing the consequences of outgrowing milk so soon in infancy, needing so much food beyond the breast, and shortening interbirth intervals that increased the number of big hungry brains on the landscape. 

Staying alive. Is that so wrong? 

And, no, none of that is equal to industrial pollution and capitalist, consumption culture, now--his "third wave" of sapiens-caused extinctions. And none of what I described above is the same as empires. There is no need to narrate early sapiens exploration and dispersal as anything but the result of population growth, curiosity, adventure, and resource acquisition.

By the end of this chapter, a reader can feel pretty low, pretty despicable. And I think Harari wants us to feel that way. All I can think is that this chapter throws his whole scheme off: Sapiens have not yet had a Cognitive Revolution. 

Chapter 5 is next. To be continued...

**

P.S. We finished painting the mudroom (a.k.a. the cave) with chalkboard paint!...