This book is so popular that it is almost always unavailable in the various libraries around Singapore. I managed to get hold of the one and only book at Queenstown Library. When Bill Gates and Barack Obama recommends a book, it should be worth a read.
I am totally impressed with this book, and am glad to know that there are so much known unknowns and unknown unknowns out there. This history book, by a historian (in 2014) should be noted as one of the must reads. It has changed my perspective of life forever. This doesn't mean that I take and believe everything that is was written.
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| Credits to NLB Queenstown for having this book |
Bing bang happened about 13.5 billion years ago, while a planet call earth formed about 3.8 billion years ago. 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, and the other our own grandmother. Animal much like modern humans first appeared about 2.5 million years ago (in East Africa). There were actually several human species, which are our siblings such as Homo rudolfensis (East Africa), Homo erectus (East Asia) and Homo neanderthalensis (Europe and Western Asia). The domestication of fire about 300,000 years ago gave humans ability to cook on a daily basis. It may have also used as a weapon to torch fellow humans.
About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo sapiens started to form elaborate structures called cultures. The subsequent development of these human cultures is called history (of the Cognitive Revolution). The other human species, such as the Neanderthals (disappeared about 30,000 years ago), while the dwarf-like humans vanished from Flores Island 12,000 years ago. They left behind some bones, stone tools, a few genes in our DNA and a lot of unanswered questions.
Homo sapiens seems to wipe out the rest and survived to this day, due to the ability to communicate (language), belief in common myths (stories, legends, religions) and the capacity to spread information (and gossips) which formed large scale cooperation.
For 2.5 million years humans fed themselves by gathering plants and hunting animals that lived and bred without their intervention. All this changed about 10,000 years ago, when Sapiens began to manipulate lives of few animal and plant species. From sunrise to sunset, humans sowed seeds, watered plants, plucked weeds and led sheep to prime pastures. This is the Agriculture Revolution, and according to the author, possibly history's biggest fraud. it certainly increased the sum of total food, but extra food did not translate into better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translate into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return! Worst, humans are now reliant on the weather - draught and flood may cause humans to go hungry, as humans gradually lost their skills as hunter-gatherer.
It also caused wars and diseases as humans no longer roam the lands freely. Everyone needs to protect their plot of land. Kingdoms formed, and slowly did empires.
This book touches on the role of empires, religions, politics and the list goes on. It even discusses on the future on humans - AI, biotech, infotech, robotics...
All in all, a good worth reading more than once.
