Blinkist Summary Book

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shovel – with farmers who needed them.
But very soon this bartering economy also proved insufficient.
As the trading market continued to grow it became harder to find someone whose goods you wanted and who wanted your goods in return. For example if you were trying to get some juicy pork from a farmer in return for your knife what do you do when he already has plenty of knives? Or what if he needed a knife but didn’t yet have a pig to slaughter? He could promise to give you a pig in the future but how do you know he’d keep his word?
It was in response to such problems that in about 3 000 BC Homo sapiens developed writing and money.
The Sumerians of Mesopotamia were the first to do this. In order to store the information needed for complex trades they began etching people’s transactions on clay tablets using simplistic economic symbols. Around the same time they started using barley money as a standardized method of pay.
This way you could pay the pig farmer in a currency easily co Open / Comment

2021-10-03 06:39:54 Sapiens
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in much higher populations. And thus the Homo sapiens population exploded.
But the increase in population created a problem: how would societies cope with such a population boom? That’s what we’ll explore in the next blinks.
In order to facilitate trade in large communities humans invented money and writing.
Life before the agricultural revolution was relatively simple. If you were low on meat you could simply ask your neighbors to share their surpluses with you. More often than not they would assist you safe in the knowledge that if they had a problem in the future you’d return the favor.
But with the development of agriculture this economy of favors developed into a barter system.
Why?
Because of its efficiency agriculture enabled people to produce enough food for the community. No longer under constant pressure to chase up the next meal some people developed new trades like blacksmithing and weaving. In order to get food they traded their finished goods – a knife say or a Open / Comment

2021-10-03 06:39:53 Sapiens
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one in terms of labor agriculture is far more time-consuming. Whereas a hunter-gatherer needs to spend about four hours collecting enough food a farmer must work from dawn to dusk on his fields.
And then there is the quality of the food on offer. Early agriculture provided our ancestors with a narrow range of cereals such as wheat which are both hard to digest and lacking in nutrients and vitamins. Compare this with the wide variety of meat nuts fruits and fish a hunter-gatherer might enjoy.
So why the change?
There are two reasons:
First the change to agriculture was a slow gradual process; with each generation the process became more societally ingrained and by the time historians uncovered the downsides of farming it was too late to turn back.
Second despite its many faults agriculture had one big advantage: it was far more efficient. On just a small patch of land farmers could grow a mass of edible plants. This increase in the food supply meant that human societies could susta Open / Comment

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ntially: From villages to cities; from cities to nation states; and from nation states to the global society of modern times.
During the Agricultural Revolution humans transformed from foragers into farmers which led to exponential population growth.
For most of our history Homo sapiens have lived a nomadic lifestyle. The vast majority of our ancestors spent their lives hunting prey and gathering vegetation. Rather than settling in one area they travelled to wherever food was plentiful.
But around 12 000 years ago this all changed. What we call the Agricultural Revolution is when Homo sapiens stopped relying solely on hunting and gathering and instead began cultivating crops and domesticating animals. Within 10 000 years or so almost all of humankind had settled into agriculture – a truly revolutionary shift.
And a slightly puzzling one. Farming may be taken for granted today but it is difficult to see why our early ancestors favored it over the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
For Open / Comment

2021-10-03 06:39:49 Sapiens
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can cooperate more flexibly adapting to changes they perceive. But they can only collaborate in fairly small numbers because to cooperate they need to know the other party intimately and this isn’t feasible in large groups.
The only animal that can cooperate flexibly and in large numbers is Homo sapiens. And that’s because through language we’re not only able to share information about the physical world; we can also discuss abstract ideas like gods history and rights. These ideas – what the author refers to as common myths – are fictional creations of the human brain. They’re the cornerstone of human culture and they’re exactly what allows us to cooperate in large groups even when we don’t know everyone personally. By sharing these common myths around religion or identity or freedom communities of individuals are forged.
Early Homo sapiens lived in small bands – roughly 150 strong. But thanks to language and common myths it was possible to increase the size of our communities expone Open / Comment

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are social animals; we live in communities. Language allows information to flow freely between individuals within those communities meaning that important lessons – about food predators or even dangerous untrustworthy individuals within the group – can be shared.
For example using language one person who has found an abundant supply of fruit trees can tell the others where it is. Someone who has discovered the hiding place of a predator can warn the rest of the group to avoid that area. In both cases language gives the community a distinct advantage.
But perhaps the biggest benefit of language is that it helps create a common understanding between members of a group and this is what gives humans their unique advantage.
There are other animals that can cooperate in large numbers like bees but their cooperation is very rigid. They cannot adapt their societal order based on changes in their environment like new threats or opportunities.
There are also animals such as chimpanzees that Open / Comment

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they spread out and colonized Europe Asia America and even Australia.
As humanity spread across the globe however with their improved hunting techniques they left a trail of extinctions in their wake.
For example just 50 000 years ago Australia was inhabited by a multitude of big land mammals – ground sloths that were 20 feet tall and armadillos the size of minivans! But within a couple thousand years of Homo sapiens ’ arrival the vast majority of these animals were gone.
The capacity for complex language gave Homo sapiens great advantages allowing them to spread and thrive.
What do you think best exemplifies the concept of human sophistication? For many the answer is language. Human language is incredibly complex and intricate especially when compared to the communication of other species.
It will come as no surprise then that the development of intricate language was one of the most important factors in Homo sapiens ’ domination. Let’s delve into why that is.
Homo sapiens Open / Comment

2021-10-03 06:39:48 Sapiens
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of early modern humans went through an evolutionary leap known as the Cognitive Revolution. This development gave them a relatively sudden improvement in brainpower.
With their improved brain capabilities Homo sapiens were able to outperform their rivals. For example they began to form larger more sophisticated communities; they invented more complex forms of hunting tools and techniques; and they even began to establish primitive trade networks.
Such advantages meant that Homo sapiens could find food and resources even in the harshest of environments far easier than the other species of human.
For example in order to reach America Homo sapiens had to be able to withstand the Arctic conditions of the Siberian passage. So they learned to team together and hunt the large nutrient-packed mammoths and to make snowshoes and warm clothing out of their skin and fur.
This revolution in brainpower allowed modern humans to venture into the most remote corners of the globe. Starting in Africa Open / Comment

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that Homo sapiens thanks to their slightly superior skills and technology pushed other human species toward extinction – either by taking away their food sources or by violently killing them off.
So which of the theories is most likely to be correct? Well both are likely to be partially correct: Homo sapiens probably drove the other species toward annihilation and simultaneously interbred with them.
Since the extinction of the dwarf-like Homo floresiensis 12 000 years ago Homo sapiens have been the only humans on the planet.
With the Cognitive Revolution Homo sapiens acquired thinking and communication skills that allowed them to conquer the globe.
So we have just seen how other human species were driven to extinction by Homo sapiens and how it was a combination of slight advantages that gave Homo sapiens the edge. But what exactly was it that gave them these advantages?
The answer lies in the unique structure of the Homo sapiens ’ brain. About 70 000 years ago the brain Open / Comment

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and Asia.
It wasn’t until 300 000 years ago that modern humans Homo sapiens first appeared. This new species of human were not particularly special. Sure they had large brains walked upright used tools and were highly social but so did the other species of human. For example Neanderthals hunted large game and used fire long before the emergence of Homo sapiens .
And yet despite there being nothing particularly special about Homo sapiens they prospered and overspread the globe; all the other human species died out. Why?
There are two theories to explain this: The Interbreeding Theory suggests that Homo sapiens began mating with the other species of humans – most notably Homo neanderthalensis – and that that resulted in the species’ gradually merging together. There is evidence to back this theory up: the DNA of modern Europeans contains between 1 and 4 percent of Neanderthal DNA as well as some DNA from other earlier human species.
The Replacement Theory on the other hand suggests Open / Comment