The previous post focused on a single, to me key, aspect of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari. This post focuses on the other aspect of the book I found compelling. The last one was about the power fiction gave homo sapiens. This one is about the Agricultural Revolution (the AR).

And other important Revolutions that followed, but the AR wrought a profound change on the human race. It was our first step towards societies and civilization. It ushered in the first cities and led to kingdoms and empires.

It also led to materialism, greed, health issues, theft, and war.

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While not usually my cup of tea, Amazon Prime offered Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari, and I thought I’d give it a try. I’d never heard of the author, and don’t usually read anthropology or sociology books, but the blurb made it sound interesting (don’t they always).

I did enjoy the first third. The author discusses two aspects of our ancient past that really grabbed my attention. Unfortunately, he went on to lose it. In a big way. For me, the latter two thirds of the book added little and missed what seemed some key connections.

So, three posts (at least): one each for the two attention grabbers; one more for the book overall. This first one is about our special ability as storytellers.

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