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Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari | Conversation Starters
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari | Conversation Starters
Our species, homo sapiens, was just one of the different human species that existed 100,000 years ago. Today, only our kind survives. How did homo sapiens make it to the 21st century without becoming extinct like the other human species? In A Brief History of Humankind, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari tells the history of the human race covering 70,000 years. Humankind went through several major revolutions which gave us the edge over the others. Harari introduces the exciting ideas about the binding power of stories and myths that unite millions of people around the world, and of biotechnology that create amortal cyborgs who will succeed our species. Leaders like Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recommended this international bestselling book to their followers.
A Brief Look
EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER than the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive, and the characters and its world still live on. Conversation Starters is peppered with questions designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on.
These questions can be used to...
Create Hours of
Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups
Foster a deeper understanding of the book
Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately
Explore unseen realms of the book as never seen before
This book you are about to enjoy is an independent resource meant to supplement the original book. If you have not yet read the original book, we encourage doing before purchasing this unofficial Conversation Starters.
Our species, homo sapiens, was just one of the different human species that existed 100,000 years ago. Today, only our kind survives. How did homo sapiens make it to the 21st century without becoming extinct like the other human species? In A Brief History of Humankind, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari tells the history of the human race covering 70,000 years. Humankind went through several major revolutions which gave us the edge over the others. Harari introduces the exciting ideas about the binding power of stories and myths that unite millions of people around the world, and of biotechnology that create amortal cyborgs who will succeed our species. Leaders like Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg recommended this international bestselling book to their followers.
A Brief Look
EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER than the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive, and the characters and its world still live on. Conversation Starters is peppered with questions designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on.
These questions can be used to...
Create Hours of
Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups
Foster a deeper understanding of the book
Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately
Explore unseen realms of the book as never seen before
This book you are about to enjoy is an independent resource meant to supplement the original book. If you have not yet read the original book, we encourage doing before purchasing this unofficial Conversation Starters.
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Published December 4, 2017
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May 5, 2022
This book is over-rated and the author is publicised as some kind of guru. Sapiens (a brief history of Humankind) reminds me of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel (a short history for the last 13,000 years). While J Diamond is a true polymath with in-depth knowledge of the subjects he writes about, YN Harari, a historian who writes about anthropology, psychology, religion, geography, science and various other things, makes statements that are not only wrong, but could have been easily checked for accuracy.
The historian in my book group picked up on historical inaccuracies; I’ve chosen 3 other examples that stood out to me:
1.“A typical forager 30,000 years ago had access to only one type of sweet food – ripe fruit” (page 46). What about honey? Honey bees evolved between 80 and 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
2. “For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil” (page 207). It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil, money itself can be used to do good in the world.
3. “If Darwin had never been born...we’d today attribute the theory of evolution to Alfred Russell Wallace, who came up with the idea of evolution via natural selection independently of Darwin and just a few years later” (page 303). AR Wallace was a working class naturalist who independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection well before Darwin published anything about it.. Wallace, working in the Malay Archipelago, shared the theory with Darwin by correspondence. Darwin got the credit largely because of his connections at The Linnean Society and his social standing.
YN Harari’s history of humankind starts 13.5 billion years ago, well before Homo Sapiens evolved 2.5 billion years ago, well before history and so largely speculation. The reader is impressed by the scope of the book, but it would have been more impressive if it was better researched. Over-generalisations are inevitable with a timeline that starts billions of years before the present time and ends with speculation about the future.
The historian in my book group picked up on historical inaccuracies; I’ve chosen 3 other examples that stood out to me:
1.“A typical forager 30,000 years ago had access to only one type of sweet food – ripe fruit” (page 46). What about honey? Honey bees evolved between 80 and 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
2. “For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil” (page 207). It’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil, money itself can be used to do good in the world.
3. “If Darwin had never been born...we’d today attribute the theory of evolution to Alfred Russell Wallace, who came up with the idea of evolution via natural selection independently of Darwin and just a few years later” (page 303). AR Wallace was a working class naturalist who independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection well before Darwin published anything about it.. Wallace, working in the Malay Archipelago, shared the theory with Darwin by correspondence. Darwin got the credit largely because of his connections at The Linnean Society and his social standing.
YN Harari’s history of humankind starts 13.5 billion years ago, well before Homo Sapiens evolved 2.5 billion years ago, well before history and so largely speculation. The reader is impressed by the scope of the book, but it would have been more impressive if it was better researched. Over-generalisations are inevitable with a timeline that starts billions of years before the present time and ends with speculation about the future.
Displaying 1 of 1 review