My endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time is now advancing one chapter at a time. This one's about recent large animal extinctions. Sapiens says sapiens are to blame. So, says Harari, "Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature." But the same (supposed) scientific reasoning could also just as easily…
My endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time is, from now on, advancing one chapter at a time. In the last post , we finished Chapter 2. But I stopped short of facing every claim about Neanderthal cognition, or purported lack thereof, that Harari used to support the narrative that sapiens killed them off. And, on top of that, the idea that…
I'm finally getting around to a home improvement project I've been planning for close to forever. I'm painting our entire mudroom, which we call "the cave" (because it's like a cave), with chalkboard paint so we can properly treat it like a cave. So, yesterday, I finally (read in 11-year-old's voice) go to the local Ace hardware store to purchase the paint. I ask for help from the person at the…
Today's is the last post covering Chapter 2. This is part of my endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time . After a brief respite from unevidenced claims or assumptions about human evolution, we are back in business, baby. Page 32 "Ever since the Cognitive Revolution..." Revolution implies that the shift was sudden. But we have no evidence for…
This is the third of four posts covering Chapter 2, as part of my endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time . ** My kid has always loved pancakes. Whenever his Kindergarten worksheets came home in his backpack, prompts related to food were almost always accompanied by a crayon illustration of a syrupy short stack. One evening, way back then, I…
I have a macular pucker in one eye, scar tissue on the macula, and now straight lines that I see with this eye are distorted, objects are elongated, the full moon is an oval. I’m seeing things both d ifferently from the other eye, and differently from all the years before this happened. But, when I look at the moon with this eye, it looks just as right as when I look with the other eye, or when I…
Here's the second of (what will be) four posts covering Chapter 2 in this endeavor to review Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time. Today's topic is language, which emerged thanks to what we read about last time: the "Tree of Knowledge" mutation. I'm guessing he didn't call it the "Tree of Language" mutation because that would be straying too far from…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time. Chapter 1 felt like an eternity. Given all the millions of years it covers, and how long it took me to post the pages, it kind of was. But I was, at least, enjoying the process. Now, while I still expect to enjoy the process going forward, the honeymoon is definitely over. Just looking at the first two…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time, sometimes four. Today's post marks the end of Chapter 1. An Animal of No Significance. In the last post, we were considering models for human origins that affect how we regard the hominins of the Genus Homo — mostly, the middle to later ones with large brains . Either we see many separate species, with…
Maybe this is the image in your head when you read the title of this post? In college in the late nineties, I devoured a fantastic new book called A Perfect Storm on a flight to Boston. I was on my way to visit my boyfriend in his hometown and to attend Fiesta in Gloucester, Mass. I don't know what Fiesta's like now, but in 1998 us youngsters were pretty happy that they opened the men's-only bars…
I took a little break to focus on some great books: 1. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation by Hayden White 2. Plainwater by Anne Carson 3. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan 4. And my third time through Moby-Dick (that's the third time through within the last year!) — which I was planning to do later in the…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time, sometimes two. We are still in Chapter 1, but I'm feeling a little punchy. I'm kind of dying to get to Chapter 8 (p. 133-159). And then I cannot wait for the bombshell on page 196. But those pages are so far away. And... the only way to get there is to get through the pages before. So... One foot in front…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time. Harari's portrayal of human evolution as an epic psychological drama forms the basis for this book's conception of human nature, which forms the basis for this book's narrative about history, science, tech, and the future. It's an understatement to say that lots of readers like it. Perhaps they like it…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time. Last time , I forgot to include something fun. Imagine if you will, trying to orgasm in a lit-up hospital room, on an empty stomach, with strangers (or close to it) streaming in and out to check to see how you're doing. Just as you're entering your zone, escaping into the void, or wherever you go... an…
One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Already, what we've seen on the pages pairs nicely with something Rebecca Solnit wrote in her essay called Woolf's Darkness . "Nonfiction has crept closer to fiction in our time in ways that are not flattering to fiction, in part because too many writers cannot come to terms with the ways in which the…
I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari one page at a time. So far, what I've taken on may be characterized as " petty and annoying mistakes "--especially to people outside the field of paleoanthropology who have no personal or professional relationship with the details. I get it. Who cares about nuances of skull anatomy and beginning/end dates of the different…
One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. People of the Internet really love to hate this book. And, after only one reading, I couldn't have said that I did. I first came to Sapiens sometime in 2015, well before the hype, the blockbuster success, and the legacy. At the start, I'd have said (and did say) there were problems, but I would have said…
Welcome to another page! I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, one page at a time. This time I'm doing two together (6-7), because they share one figure. But first, a couple thoughts since the earlier pages. This manuscript reads as if someone struck all "as if" and "like". And so it reads like it's asserting facts. But there have hardly been any so far. The…
One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Page 5 Please forgive the breakfast crumb. After brushing it off, I thought to re-take the photo, until it occurred to me that this really is a crummy page. Smack in the middle, there's a mind-blowing bit, the kind that gives you that numinous feeling, or something like it, that I'm going to have to ruin.…
One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Here we are. Just three posts into this journey and it's already feeling like Bible study. (Some of us didn't just to go church most Sundays of our formative years. We also went to religious school with religion class at the start of each day.) Open up the book that starts with creation and ends in…
One page at a time, I'm reviewing Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Page 2 is blank. Page 3 Chapter 1: An Animal of No Significance The Big Bang makes sense as a first sentence. We won't bother to see if anyone's changed the estimated date since Harari chose one to put "about 13.5 billion years ago" here. But I think they have changed it or, at least, I've heard a…
I've been co-teaching a course for several years in which we read Sapiens . I think I've read it eight times, now. That explains the gumband holding it together. The heavy waxy pages are separating from the spine. Whether I'll teach the course again is currently a mystery but, if I do, Sapiens won't be part of it, which means that I can finally air my thoughts about the book here on The Mermaid's…
There's a new essay in the journal Theory and Society and it's concerned for the state of, and future of, the social sciences. It's got " evolutionary lens " in the title and it's by Gad Saad (about whom I learned a lot from Jill Lepore in this excellent series on Elon Musk ), so I had to take a look. This is what I saw... Portlandia's " Put a Bird On It! " Are people doubting that evolutionary…
Maybe this is you, too. I am slowly reading my way through the classics. Sometimes I think I already know the story because I can recite the movie by heart—like the one about the girl and her friends who go to see the wizard. Sometimes the story is surprisingly funny, enthralling, and profound—like the one about the men who hunt whales. Sometimes the story is not at all what I expected—like the…
This post (about real life events that transpired some years ago) is dedicated to everyone who loved How to With John Wilson (2020-2023) and, especially, to everyone who just googled to see if there will be more seasons of it. First, drive your car at a high rate of speed over something hard, pull over to the shoulder, walk back, see what it is, and take it home. It’s Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean…