Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is a book I've been wanting to read for a while. 

I read 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann, which is supposed to be part of the big history genera, from the Big Bang to Present. His point was that at that time, the continents were all connected a way, and made things possible like the pandemic we're going through. When I look at the wikipedia entry I don't see either of their names in the list of people who study it, but I guess they were both popularizers perhaps. 

Reading the book, I have thought of 3 other works I have read. Clan and the Cave Bear includes sex between Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthal, which tips it towards the assimilation theory instead of the wiping out the other versions of humans. Humans are notoriously mean about little differences, it's not hard to imagine wars between competing human species. 

The other work I thought of was the movie franchise Planet of the Apes. 

Then there are the commercials that have neanderthals who act like homo sapiens are prejudiced against them. The insurance company is saying it just makes sense to the lesser human species to use their insurance, it should to ours.

We have some neanderthal genes in us, so there was some assimilation.

I love learning about things like the Lion-man, 35,000 and 40,000 years old, which resides in Ulm Germany now. Wikipedia has a pretty cool list of stone age art.

Quotes:

"The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud."

“Confusingly, these signs are known as Arabic numerals even though they were first invented by the Hindus (even more confusingly, modern Arabs use a set of digits that look quite different from Western ones). But the Arabs get the credit because when they invaded India they encountered the system, understood its usefulness, refined it, and spread it through the Middle East and then to Europe.”

"The Bible decrees that ‘If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife’ (Deuteronomy 22: 28–9)."

"Contemporary American politics also revolve around this contradiction. Democrats want a more equitable society, even if it means raising taxes to fund programmes to help the poor, elderly and infirm. But that infringes on the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they wish. Why should the government force me to buy health insurance if I prefer using the money to put my kids through college? Republicans, on the other hand, want to maximise individual freedom, even if it means that the income gap between rich and poor will grow wider and that many Americans will not be able to afford health care."