I’ve read two of Yuval’s books.
I don’t find them scientifically that good. The book “Sapiens: A brief history of humankind” has opinions without any facts put on it.
Let me re-write what I reviewed about it:
1. It only focuses on the Iron age onwards - it completely ignores the previous 7000 years of agricultural history
2. He forgets the core of the book - Sapience. Humanity has abstract concepts and those are no less “real” than physical constructs - at least to humanity. They are also critical to our sense of self.
3. His statements on the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture is just stupid. The H-G still practiced rudimentary agriculture and had some cultural practices handed down (shared ethos etc. as seen in the Khoi-San and the purely H-G aborigines); but they did not have specializations nor allow us to think further in abstract thoughts. An H-G has no use for writing, so that area restricts HGs - as seen in octopi who are smart, but have no way to hand down knowledge from generation to generation
4. Then his explanation for why “Europe dominated the world from 1750 to now” is pure Eurocentricism and wrong:
4.1 Europe started innovations due to its geography (no large plains, but broken up areas, causing competition)
4.2. Christianity - Catholicism banned slavery in Europe in the early middle ages, so people had to innovate to manage that loss in productivity - so they developed machines
4.3. Higher learning - again, Christianity with its focus on the studying of texts and then with the monasteries as foundations of learning
Homo Deus is also equally flawed in the sense of being so opinionated he doesn’t bring out the opposite argument.
We are not creatures of pure logic. If we were, then we would not have religion, art, literature, philosophy. Heck we wouldn’t even have much of the sciences as to start with we’d need to imagine.
I much prefer
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The power of babel by John McWhorter (not really anthropoligical, but veering to it
The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber
Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Daron Acemoglu
When “Sapiens” came out, the Journal ran a glowing review of it. It just seemed wrong — until I looked at the author of the review, Charles Mann.
I respect Mann’s historical work, but not his perspective. Took a pass on the book, and everything I have learned since about Yuval has affirmed that decision.