A Brief History of Humankind Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
Contributed by Tereasa Jacob
Chapter 3
Summary

According to Prof. Harari, to understand nature, psychology and history of humans, it is important to look into it from the perspective of their hunter-gatherers. Harari (40) says the “preceding 10,000 years, during which most Sapiens lived as farmers and herders, are the blink of an eye compared to the tens of thousands of years during which our ancestors hunted and gathered.” This statement informs the transition of sapiens from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. However, people would always tend to behave like their ancestors, because behavior and character is inheritable.  By extension, Harari states ancestors of humans, Adam and Eve, were gatherers and hunters, and to date human beings still have the behaviors of their ancestors despite living in post-industrial societies. Ideally, this chapter claims that the current people still possess the hunter-gatherer minds, which interact with their current post-industrial societies. Hence, the current behaviors of people are still linked to the behaviors of their hunter-gatherers, and that means that despite people being in modern societies they still possess the behaviors of their hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Analysis

Substantially, the author suggests that despite the evolution of the sapiens into superior beings, its behavior is still linked to hunter-gatherer. This is to imply that, human beings still act like their ancestors. Hitherto, human beings still possess their ancestral characters. For instance, the hunter-gatherers were used to sweeter foodstuffs and to date people still consume sugary foodstuffs, which resultantly is the cause of obesity.

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