For three years now, the book 'Sapiens' has been at number one on the bestseller list in Israel. It is a sharp, critical and engaged book about the history of our species from 70,000 years ago, when the Homo sapiens a species still insignificant to ecology. This “Little History of Mankind” is written alternately cynically and humorously, and hard to put aside. The Dutch translation was recently published. Kennislink had the opportunity to speak with the writer, the 38-year-old Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.
For a historian you go very far back in time… “For me, history is the study of all beings that have the same cognitive abilities as we do. From studies of tools and cave paintings, we know that from about 40,000 years ago sapiens are as intelligent as we are, perhaps even smarter on an individual level. I don't see the logic in starting history with the early kingdoms. Also, you cannot study human history without paying attention to the evolution and environment in which sapiens lived. Unfortunately, that still happens too little.”
How would you like to spend a day with the Stone Age man? “A day would be far too short. It would not be enough to learn his language. According to linguists, hunter-gatherers and early farmers had a complex language precisely because their community was so small. But we know little about it because nothing has been put in writing. If I were to spend a day with a Stone Age person, I would be especially curious about how he/she experiences life and the world and not so much how he/she survives technically. I would like to understand his emotional and spiritual life.”
“How are their mutual relationships, family ties and what is their relationship to animals? Did they have nuclear families or did they live in commune-like structures in which they raised their children together? We do not know. The diversity of societies may have been very great, just as the relationships in chimpanzee groups and bonobos are very different. It is only after the agricultural revolution that patriarchal structures become dominant.”
You write that the agrarian revolution did not provide a better life for sapiens… “The greatest lesson of the agricultural revolution—the earliest of which occurred in the Middle East around 12,000 years ago—is that farming life was much harder than life as a hunter-gatherer. Body and mind evolved for a hunter-gatherer existence. Farm life is physically demanding and monotonous for our brains. From fossil skeletons you can deduce that Homo sapiens will suffer as soon as he exchanges the existence of a hunter-gatherer for farming life. Sapiens expected that this would bring him more food and security. The opposite happened. The greater availability of food led to population growth; they had to protect their crops from theft.”
“So it did not provide more certainty. Armies and kings took the food from the peasants. It should be a lesson to humanity:better conditions through more possessions often lead to unpredictable problems. Health did not improve either. The diet of hunter-gatherers was more varied:they ate mushrooms, berries and all kinds of animals. 90% of our diet currently comes from one crop:wheat. Addiction to some core crops started during the agricultural revolution.”
Has being born in Israel influenced your approach to sapien history? "Yes, of course. Israel is the area where Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals lived together for thousands of years. For about three years now, we have known that Europeans and the population of the Middle East possess 4% Neanderthal DNA. Around 40,000 years ago, there were major differences between the two human species, both physically and cognitively. So it is very special that they have produced offspring.”
“It's political dynamite because after World War II, the general idea was that there are no genetic differences between races, that we are all Homo sapiens are with the same DNA. That now appears not to be the case. We can now distinguish between groups on the basis of DNA, differences that go back hundreds of thousands of years. Melanesians have DNA from Denisovan man; Neanderthal Europeans. We don't yet know what the specific DNA is responsible for, and scientists are very cautious about making statements about this. We can expect explosive insights in the future as more knowledge becomes available from genetics.”
Will sapiens ever be able to live sustainably on Earth, even with nine billion souls? “In theory yes, but the capitalist economic system does not allow that. The basic principle is growth. Governments and banks fear zero growth; the economy then collapses. No political or economic elite will want to step back. This is also reflected in the problem of climate change. It used to be an apocalyptic image of a minority; now it is a consensus-based vision of the future. Still, no one wants to take the step back to reduce the risk. No government is willing to stop economic growth and achieve a truly sustainable society.”
Is economic growth a modern pursuit? Economic growth is an ideological and psychological pursuit completely unknown to medieval man. (Harari specialized as a historian in medieval history, ed.). From high to low, from kings to peasants, no one at that time expected a major change in his lifetime. The medieval image of the economy can be compared to a pie of fixed proportions; on the other hand, the idea of the modern economy is based on a cake that can grow indefinitely, regardless of its original dimensions.
“In the modern economic vision, for example, the Netherlands can grow without this being at the expense of another country. In fact, our growth depends on the growth of another country:if they grow, we grow too! Unlimited growth is the foundation of modern capitalism. People expect that in the future everything will get even better:more property, better health, more products, more raw materials.”
Do you think that is a false idea? “Europeans are now enjoying a peace and prosperity like never before in history, while they continue to complain. That's a global pattern. When progress stops, they think something is wrong. Of course there are problems, but if my medieval ancestors saw how I live now, it would look like paradise to them. People are also dissatisfied outside Europe. Look at Egypt. The chance for a mother and child to survive the birth and for an average Egyptian for a long life has never been greater since Mubarak (the Egyptian president who was deposed in 2011, ed.). Yet the Egyptians are also dissatisfied.”
Are you mainly an optimist or a pessimist? “There is reason for great optimism because so few wars are fought today. Although peace on earth is not 100%, compared to historical times, we are now living in the most peaceful time ever. Not only are there fewer wars, the threat of war is also absent. In many parts of the world, war is simply unthinkable. That gives confidence that humanity is capable of great things.”
“On the other hand, I am a pessimist because of the increase in contradictions between rich and poor, while before the 21st century the equality between the different classes was reduced. Biological differences may also increase because people who can afford it can use techniques that others simply cannot afford. I am also pessimistic about the conditions in which farm animals live and the deterioration of the environment.”
You write in your book that sapiens is the most destructive force the earth has ever known. “That is not a new phenomenon. It started tens of thousands of years ago. The impact of sapiens as a hunter-gatherer is already very large. That's because humans don't occupy a special niche. Unlike animals, we eat everything and can live anywhere. We didn't have to wait for a slow evolution of wings, we built ships to migrate to islands. Look at the megafauna of Australia, where 95% of large animals became extinct within a few thousand years of the arrival of humans, around 45,000 years ago.”
“It is true that sapiens . checked as a hunter-gatherer nature at the time was not, but it was capable of causing major extinctions and disrupting ecosystems. Sapiens was not deterred by these extinctions. As soon as the mammoth was extinct, we hunted another animal. Man has completely transformed the face of the planet. When the agricultural revolution was yet to begin, sapiens already wiped out half of all mammal species, especially in Australia and America, but also in Europe.”
Is control over nature an ongoing process? “Yes, the extent to which humans control nature is becoming increasingly extreme. 90% of the animals on Earth, measured in biomass, are farm animals or humans. Everything else is gone. Less than 10% are real wild animals, but those too are up to sapiens handed down. The conditions in which animals live are terrible. Industrial farming is history's greatest crime. The suffering of animals is out of all proportion.”
Is there enough debate about this? “There is currently no serious debate about the conditions under which animals have to live. In some countries this debate is completely absent. The power of animal welfare organizations is a drop in the ocean. If you look at a similar debate, about genetic modification, it is mainly about which techniques will or will not be used. Much more important, however, is that we ask ourselves:who do we want to become? What is our goal? Who do we want to be? At the moment it's still a detail, but if we continue at the current pace, genetic modification could become the biggest revolution since the origin of life on Earth. We have already started modifying ourselves.”
What technologies do you mainly think about? “We already have direct computer interface at our disposal to upgrade us into another creature. This allows you to create direct links between brain and computer. There are already devices for sale that allow you to move a cursor with your thoughts and thus control a computer. These devices are able to read brain waves. It is inevitable that people will start using these devices.”
Do you trust science? “The problem today is that the elite think that science will come up with a solution. When there is no more oil, or the climate changes, the elite look to scientists for a solution. Science is the new religion.”
You write that it is important to distinguish between science and technology. Why? “It is only in modern times that science and technology come together. For most of human history, science and technology have been separate worlds. As a historian, I see that individual scientists are looking for the truth, but that science as an institution is not interested in truth, but in power. Science costs a lot of money, so people are looking for applications, such as new weapons, new crops and new medicines.”
“This convergence of science and technology is an entirely new phenomenon! Even if the result is not visible in the very short term, governments know that this may well be the case after half a century. The whole internet and coding would have been impossible without the knowledge developed thanks to mathematics. What keeps coming back is that sapiens must be careful not to become its own slave to technology.”
The idea of addiction and servility keeps coming back in your description of history, such as the addiction to wheat during the agricultural revolution. Farm life did not guarantee a better life. What you see coming back again and again is that technology uses people instead of people use technology. Sapiens becomes addicted, as is now for example again to mobile telephones, while they were precisely intended to improve communication. For many people, the mobile phone is a tyrant, a dictator. The pattern is that we invent something that should make life easier, but we become dependent on it."
Can future generations cope with the high-tech society? “Technological developments are moving at lightning speed. But knowledge revolutions have always been there. I don't think the biggest change in the future will be the development of the technology itself, but the change of sapiens yourself. Think about what becomes possible if we connect to the internet and we can control a computer directly through our consciousness, or if several people are connected to each other through a computer. We could even 'read' another person's memory.”
“The concept of identity is thus being called into question. According to some scientists this is not possible, but last year the EU spent a billion euros on the ambitious Human Brain Project which aims to simulate a human brain with a computer, with the chips imitating the neural synapses. This may allow us to better understand and cure psychological and psychiatric ailments, but the implications will be much, much greater than just medicine.”