Book Review – Sapiens (How can human evolution, language, and the meaning of progress be reinterpreted?)

Critiques Yuval Harari’s claims of human superiority and the uniqueness of language in Sapiens. Emphasise the need to reinterpret human evolution and our place in the ecosystem from a broader perspective.

 

In chapters 1 and 2 of Sapiens, Yuval Harari argues that a variety of unique human traits have played a major role in primitive humans’ current position of superiority. He argues that the brain and upright walking are traits that come at a high cost, and that they are lesser contributors, but he emphasises that fire and language helped primitive humans dominate other organisms, and that the cognitive revolution was a major factor in the development of Sapiens into a globally influential species. However, there are two major problems with this argument. First, it fails to recognise humanity’s current position as one of superiority, and second, it overstates the impact that human language has had on us.
Firstly, humanity’s current position on the planet cannot be described as superior. Yuval Harari describes humans as top predators on the food chain, which presupposes that humans are the most superior beings. However, a higher position in the food chain does not imply superiority. For example, a shark in an aquarium is a top predator that can eat other fish, but we don’t see the shark as a superior being; we understand it as a member of the aquarium’s ecosystem. Similarly, humans are capable of predating on a variety of organisms in our planet’s ecosystems, but we are not a superior being on Earth.
Yuval Harari also emphasises humanity’s superiority based on the fact that humans exert a powerful influence on all life on the planet. He sees the relationship between humans and other life forms as one-sided, and writes that humans gradually domesticated animals, a process he calls human agency. However, from an evolutionary anthropological perspective, animals became domesticated themselves. According to Stephen Budianski’s “The Wildlife Vow,” early humans and wolves co-existed during the Pleistocene pre-glacial period, feeding on the same megamammals. Wolves became familiar with humans as they roamed around human settlements for scraps, and eventually decided to become human livestock of their own free will. This was not domestication by human oppression, but a voluntary choice by the wolves. These historical examples show that humans are not a unilateral influence on animals.
Nor is there any argument for human superiority in the relationship between humans andmicrobes. Stephen Jay Gould argues that bacteria have always been and will always be the most dominant life form on Earth. Bacteria were the first life forms to appear on Earth, from which some 300,000 to 1 million species have been derived. The human oral cavity and large intestine are each home to more than 400 species of bacteria, with the colon containing between 1 and 10 trillion bacteria per millilitre. There are 10 times as many bacteria in the human body as there are cells, and they make up a non-negligible proportion of human body weight. From a microbial perspective, humans are merely a home for reproduction and evolution; therefore, our impact on the planet is minimal, and we cannot claim human superiority on this basis.
In conclusion, human superiority is only an anthropo-subjective statement: we are biologically just one species in the phylum Chordata mammals, and we are not independent of other animals, but members of the Earth’s ecosystem. “Homo sapiens” narrates human progress and links human complexity to progress, but life is not progressing, only increasing in diversity. Stephen Jay Gould’s Full House emphasises that the evolution of life is not progress, but an increase in diversity. Life has simply stumbled along, and humans are not an advanced species because of our increased complexity.
Human language is also not special; it’s just one of the many naturally selected adaptations of many different species. Anatomical similarities and genetic commonalities suggest that human language is fundamentally the same as that of other species. Although Yuval Harari argues that human language is flexible and can convey a lot of information unlike other animals, it is the development of the brain that has made this possible. Therefore, it is the power of the brain, not language, that has changed our place in the ecosystem.
While “Homo sapiens” presupposes humans as superior beings and attempts to analyse why, we should look at humans objectively as just one member of the Earth’s ecosystem. We are just a universal being that shares traits with many different species.