anthropologist reviews sapiens: a brief history of EUROPEAN civilization :/

i've been avoiding reading this book for

years now but

i realized that i can't keep hiding

anymore and i need to face my fears and

just do the damn thing

hello everyone my name is maya and i am

joined once again with my gorilla

companion harambe and today we're going

to be reviewing a book that has been

living in my head rent free for the past

three to four years

sapiens by yuval noah harari now i've

spent the past four years of my life

learning about anthropology human

history human evolution human genetics

human anatomy basically all things human

hence my channel and all my videos and

i'd be lying if most of my friends

hadn't at some point asked me what my

opinions were on this book and what i

thought about it as an anthropologist i

initially tried reading it last year

because i thought it'd be interesting

but i eventually just gave up and put it

down because i was starting to get

really frustrated at some of the

arguments that the author was trying to

make but i decided that i didn't give it

a fair shot so this year i decided to

read it again thoroughly and before

anyone comes at me i know i'm like years

late with this review the book initially

came out in 2014 like with almost

everything i am very fashionably late to

this but i still think this book is

relevant to a lot of topics and

discourse about the field of

anthropology human evolution and history

today and a lot of influential people

like obama and bill gates say that this

book is amazing it's brilliant it's

eye-opening so i figure i'd give it

another critical read as you can see

i've taken some notes and i took my time

to read this book it's a pretty hefty

book it's around 450 pages i'm going to

start with the things that i liked about

the book and then afterwards talk about

the things that i didn't like about the

book for those of you that don't know

sapiens is basically kind of like a

brief history of humankind it starts off

with

how we evolved and how we went on to

conquer the world and you know migrate

out of africa

and how we created stone tools to

talking about how language came to be

the cognitive revolution and how our

brains have basically expanded over the

course of our evolution to discussing

humanistic ideas like liberalism talking

about the advent of religion

christianity islam judaism it also goes

into capitalism and communism and

discourses about economy to finally

getting us to a present day where he

talks about where science is going in

the future the meaning of life happiness

as well as what's next for homo sapiens

now let's get into what i actually

appreciated about the book as an

anthropologist and primarily a human

evolutionary biologist i am more

familiar with certain aspects of the

book than others where my expertise

starts to kind of fall off a cliff is

when it comes to different aspects of

human history that i probably haven't

really gone into detail in since high

school that being said i actually really

liked how he talked about how capitalism

shaped the world and how the economy

shaped different wars and battles that

occurred throughout history i

specifically enjoyed how he talked about

how the stock market came to be

investing in companies uh he talked

about like the mississippi crisis and

france and how that like devastated the

french economy how the dutch relied on

paying back loans with interest to

finance their imperial exports how these

same loans negatively affected the

spanish as someone that knows relatively

little about economics i think it's

really interesting to explore history

from an economic lens to see how money

and finances change the course of events

in history as we know it so i thought

that was really interesting i like how

we touched upon the awful treatment of

animals and slaughter houses and factory

farms and how we're basically braiding

these animals to just constantly produce

milk or separating mothers from their

children putting these animals in these

awful conditions as a vegetarian it

really resonated with me when he

acknowledged the harm and suffering that

we have placed on millions of farm

animals today and the effect that's

having on our environment i also really

enjoyed the discussion on happiness at

the end when he talked about what

defines happiness and kind of like how

to even go about measuring happiness

harare brings up buddhism and points out

that buddhism kind of focuses on instead

of chasing these feelings and chasing

these like euphoric highs and lows just

to kind of accept that life is just

cycles of suffering and happiness and to

just get used to feeling and

experiencing those things instead of

trying to chase those highs and lows i

also really enjoyed when he explained

how money came to be how coinage came to

be how it was something that we all had

to kind of believe in uh as a universal

concept it was almost religious in the

sense where people had to believe in

like a higher order of things so that

they could conduct business or pay for

services or do whatever they needed to

do it's things like these that you never

think about that you just kind of take

for granted and while i already knew a

lot about how written language came to

be i still thought it was really cool

how he touched upon how written language

evolved as a way to keep track of

certain stocks of certain things or

inventories and such and how he talked

about the ancient sumerians and the use

of written written language to keep

track of their inventories finally i

thought that he had a kind of nuanced

take on british imperialism i have a lot

of opinions about british imperialism

that could probably warrant like an

hour-long video about it but i thought

it was really interesting when he talked

about how in a sense british colonies

have kind of benefited from british

imperialism as horrible as it was and it

was horrible these colonies ended up

adopting a lot of democratic and liberal

doctrines from imperialism that they

probably wouldn't have otherwise kept

okay okay

now let's get into the issues with

sapiens because oh boy are there some

issues with this book honestly the first

half when he's talking about our

evolution is kind of hard for me to sit

through because it kind of frustrates me

as someone who spent the last four years

of my life studying our evolution harare

gets a lot of things right but he also

oversimplifies and overgeneralizes a lot

and this frustrates me on page five he

says our nearest loving relatives

include chimpanzees gorillas and

orangutans the chimpanzees are the

closest just six million years ago a

single female ape had two daughters one

became the ancestor of all chimpanzees

the other is their own grandmother this

is not what evolution looks like and

this is actually a huge issue because in

my debates with people that don't

believe in evolution they always bring

up the point that it's impossible for a

chimpanzee to just give birth to a human

and this paragraph basically essentially

is trying to say that it's trying to say

that oh just one random day six million

years ago a female chimpanzee gave birth

to two people one was a human and one

was a chimpanzee and this is such a

flawed view of our evolution that i

don't even know where to start with this

first of all this is not how evolution

works there's two types of evolution

macroevolution and microevolution

macroevolution is the kind of evolution

that takes place over hundreds of

thousands of years and saying something

as simplistic as a chimpanzee just gave