? This 70,000-year historical span is divided into three revolutions by the author. The first is the cognitive revolution, which enables Homo sapiens to master tools skillfully, learn to plow by fire, and conquer other continents across the ocean, thus standing at the top of the food chain; The agricultural revolution, which started about 1 10,000 years ago, changed Homo sapiens from a gathering society to a farming society, and the population he could support greatly increased. The arrival of the scientific revolution in the last 500 years has completely changed human life, because modern science is willing to admit its ignorance, instead of always thinking that there is a set of theories that can explain everything, which is more dynamic and flexible than the previous knowledge system.
? I have to say that just after reading this book, I have a feeling of opening the door to a new world. The perspective is unique. General history books analyze the development of history from the perspective of human beings. This book is closer to God's perspective and seems to overlook the vicissitudes of the planet from space: Homo sapiens is not the only human animal that has appeared, but also Neanderthals, Homo erectus and other close relatives. Although we can understand the process of Homo sapiens gaining wisdom, so far no one can explain it with atheistic theory. Homo sapiens became the master of the earth, which is probably the result of a series of accidental factors. There are many interesting arguments in the book, for example, imagination constitutes human civilization: many social animals can have some simple modes of information exchange and cooperation, but they are all based on physical feelings. Only when human beings have the independent ability to believe in imaginary things can the human community break through the natural boundary of 150 people and begin to have the ability of large-scale cooperation. In today's society, these national concepts and religious beliefs can make hundreds of millions of people. There are also some thought-provoking views. For example, the domestication of wheat by human beings is actually the domestication of human beings by wheat, and human beings have risen from human beings to creating gods, and may also die from human beings to becoming gods. Finally, there is another advantage: the author's writing is concise and beautiful, and the arguments are quoted in detail. The Chinese version I read contains many examples of China's history. It is said that Herari has added different characters to different language versions, which shows his skill.
Of course, after reading this book completely, I always feel that there is something missing in this book. After all, this is just a popular popular science book. Not surprisingly, the evaluation of this book in mainstream historians is not very high. It is very popular, so it also has the common problems of bestsellers that are heated up by the media. First of all, it is a bit blind to pursue unconventional views and fall into an inconsistent situation. One obvious flaw I can see is the confusion of the central point of the full text. The first half puts forward that the average happiness of individuals is more important than the number of species. Well, I feel a little lucky. However, after talking about the fact that technology can artificially create happiness through electrical stimulation, I feel that the author is denying the meaning of happiness, even the meaning of human subjective feelings. Is it a little mechanical determinism? Then, the author dabbles in a wide range, and I admire many cultural allusions of different nationalities, but they are inevitably superficial. Some viewpoints are actually combined with many predecessors' theories, just trying to express them in a novel way. For example, the author seems to think that the life of people in primitive gathering society is happier than that of people in farming society. People in the collection agency are very rich, and they only need three hours to collect things every day to fill their stomachs. The rapid population growth in farming society leads to people's more fatigue in order to survive, and there are more and more infectious diseases and struggles. Whether this conclusion is correct or not, this view is not new in China. Laozi's "small country with few people" and Yang Zhu's "poverty-stricken" all advocate that society should retreat to a smaller ethnic group so that everyone can get a relative sense of happiness.
? Generally speaking, the reading experience of this book is quite good. This is a book on popular science in history, which is biased towards philosophical thinking. It provides an objective perspective to examine the process of human development, and some viewpoints such as evolutionary psychology and biological sociology are also my first time to dabble. A bestseller can provide us with these gains, which has been very successful. Of course, it is not appropriate to accept all the views in it as a standard. Perhaps it is a better choice to think critically in the process of reading.