To Korean readers
Historical Timeline

Part 1: The Cognitive Revolution

1.
Animals of little importance
2.
Tree of Knowledge
3.
One day Adam and Eve
4.
deluge

Part 2: The Agricultural Revolution

5.
The greatest fraud in history
6.
Building a pyramid
7.
memory overload
8.
There is no justice in history

Part 3: The Unity of Humanity

9.
The arrow of history
10.
The scent of money
11.
Vision of the Empire
12.
The Law of Religion
13.
Secret to Success

Part 4: Scientific Revolutions

14.
The discovery of ignorance
15.
The Marriage of Science and Empire
16.
capitalist doctrine
17.
Wheel of Industry
18.
Endless Revolution
19.
And they lived happily ever after
20.
The End of Homo Sapiens

Review_ Animals that became gods
Translator's Note
References
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From the distant origins of humanity to cyborgs,
The birth, progress, and future of humanity in one volume!

There is a book that has stirred up the global publishing world and media both last year and this year.
The impact of a book by a young, almost unknown Israeli scholar was enormous.
This book was read by countless people not only in the Western world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, but also in South America, including Brazil, and Asia, including China and Taiwan, and became a bestseller, and was selected as a book of the year or awarded a publishing award.


Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recommended it as a book to read together in his book club, and scholars and celebrities from various fields, including Jared Diamond, Damien Hirst, and Henning Mankell, have recommended it without hesitation.
It is a story about the origins, development, and evolution of humanity, but its expansive narrative, which crosses academic boundaries such as anthropology, economics, biology, psychology, and a discussion of happiness, is captivating enough to capture the hearts of readers around the world.
This is a tribute to Professor Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens, which teaches history at the Hebrew University of Israel.

Why has this book captured the attention and enthusiasm of so many? This young author, just entering his forties (Korean age), has already gained widespread support, reaching over 80,000 people worldwide through online lectures on YouTube, TED, and MOOCs.

The author's comprehensive view of history, his amazing writing skills that elaborately unfold vast stories, his extraordinary theories that overwhelm his writing skills, his surprising insights, his exquisite wit, and his passion for writing books that even college freshmen can read, books that all generations can relate to and read easily - this wonderful harmony of all these has made countless people his fans, and Sapiens can be said to be the essence of Yuval Harari's thinking that has melted all of this together.


Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, Scientific Revolution
Will humans finally become gods?

Sapiens begins its story approximately 13.5 billion years ago, when the Big Bang gave rise to physics and chemistry; approximately 3.8 billion years ago, when life arose under the dominance of natural selection, giving rise to biology; and approximately 70,000 years ago, when the Homo sapiens species developed, creating culture and pioneering history.


The author presents three great revolutions that have shaped the course of humanity across this vast history of tens of thousands of years, from the past to the present.
These are the cognitive revolution about 70,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution about 12,000 years ago, and the scientific revolution about 500 years ago.
The Scientific Revolution is a part of history that is still evolving, and the Agricultural Revolution continues to reveal new facts, but the Cognitive Revolution remains largely shrouded in mystery.
The imaginative language, based on unfinished discoveries and meager historical data, is surprisingly rational and flawless, drawing readers in.

The author identifies seven crucial catalysts in the development of history: fire, gossip, agriculture, myth, money, contradiction, and science.
With the start of the cognitive revolution, humans, who rose to the top of the food chain by mastering fire, formed social communities through language (gossip), and humans, who had remained hunter-gatherers, experienced exponential population growth through the agricultural revolution.
The powerful weapons used to control the growing population are fictional myths about religion, class, and power (of course, it was also fictional myths that dominated hunter-gatherer societies).
The development of agriculture led to an increase in wealth and a settled life, and people began to blindly believe in money, and blindly believing in money caused social contradictions.
The scientific revolution 500 years ago opened up a world completely different from the one before.


“This revolution may bring about the end of history, or it may usher in something entirely new.” (p. 19)

Humanity, which has been governed by natural selection for 4 billion years, is now looking toward the realm of the gods.
What will the future, shaped by human intelligent design, look like? Sapiens offers us, living in this crucial moment, a glimpse into the future ahead, and suggests that now is the time to foresee this future.


Only Homo sapiens remained on the plains.

The author chillingly demonstrates that history is never merciful through the countless moments of contradiction that arise throughout this long process.
Through these three revolutions, humanity has continued to gallop forward. But, as the author states in the introduction, "What impact have these three revolutions had on humans and their fellow living beings? That is the subject of this book" (p. 19).


The plains where at least six species of humans lived 100,000 years ago, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, and Homo erectus, unfold so vividly that it seems as if you can see them with your own eyes.
The author then asks the reader if they know how the Homo sapiens species survived on Earth as the sole victor.


“The truth is this.
From two million years ago until about ten thousand years ago, various human species lived on Earth simultaneously.
Why wouldn't it be so? Even today, countless species, including foxes, bears, and pigs, live in the same era.
Tens of thousands of years ago, at least six species of humans lived on Earth.
What is strange here is not that there were many species in the past, but rather that there is now only one.”
-Page 26

On the plains where Neanderthals and Homo erectus disappeared, only Homo sapiens remained, and wherever humans set foot, large fauna disappeared like a flood.
Only a few species, such as cows, pigs, sheep, and dogs, have been able to increase their populations by being forced to obey human needs, but their lives under industrial forced farming are miserable and cruel.
For Europeans, money was so attractive that they would even risk death for it.
Those who left for the New World in search of more money massacred Native Americans and used Africans as slaves to accumulate more capital.
The ordinary Europeans who invested money in the slave industry were not evil people.
They were just indifferent and ignorant.
This kind of capital has laid the foundation for the development of science and culture in the Western world, and now human science promises the 'Gilgamesh Project' of immortality.
However, the author predicts that this technological advancement will not be fair to everyone.
A world where the rich live forever and the poor must die.
This future is coming soon.


“In the next few decades, genetic engineering and biotechnology will allow us to dramatically alter human physiology, immune systems, lifespan, and even intellectual and emotional capabilities.
If genetic engineering can create genius mice, why can't it create genius humans? If we can create monogamous field mice, why can't we create humans genetically predisposed to lifelong fidelity to their partners?
-Page 570

Are we happier than our hunter-gatherer ancestors?

One book cannot reexamine all of history.
However, the history of humanity seen at a glance in 『Sapiens』 is overflowing with food for thought every time you turn the page.
The philosophical debate about who is happier: the ancient people who had little but high expectations, or modern people who have wide-open possibilities but can hardly be satisfied, is particularly interesting.
The author revealed in an interview that one of the book's main messages is that "humans have never been more powerful, but we are no happier than our ancestors."

Why are advanced modern humans no longer happy? While in previous eras, the death rate from violence by others was high, now Sapiens are killing themselves.
We have power, money, and technology, yet we still pursue them without even knowing why.
A technique as fascinating as it is dangerous is blasphemous in itself.
The author says, “We are at a crossroads where we ourselves are trying to become gods.
But we don't know if this is what we really want," he says.
It is a depressing story that the meanings that humans pursue, such as humanism and nationalism, are nothing but delusions, and that trying to find happiness by aligning individual fantasies with collective fantasies is ultimately nothing but self-deception.
But it leaves some room for improvement.
It has only been a short time since we began studying happiness, and the possibilities for happiness are still wide open.


“As far as we know, from a purely scientific point of view, human life is absolutely meaningless.
Humanity is the product of a blind evolutionary process that proceeds without purpose or intention.
Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan.
Even if the planet Earth were to explode tomorrow morning, the universe would probably go on as usual.
At that point, as far as we know, there will be no beings who miss human subjectivity.
“The value people place on their lives is nothing but an illusion.”
-Pages 552-553

Yuval Harari to Korean readers

To commemorate the publication in Korea, Yuval Harari sent a preface specifically for Korean readers.
His interest in Korean society can be read in the introduction.
Koreans have achieved more technological advancements than any other nation in the world, yet they have the highest suicide rate among OECD countries.
Even in happiness surveys, it lags behind less developed countries such as Mexico and Colombia.
The author writes, “This shows a dark side of the most widely accepted law of history.
He said that this is an example that shows that “humans are very good at acquiring power, but not so good at converting power into happiness” (p. 10).


The examples of South and North Korea also show that the nature of social change can be completely different depending on the values ​​of a nation.
Through the example of Korea, a society that experienced colonial rule and war within a century and achieved rapid economic growth amidst the ruins, we once again emphasize the need for humanity to ponder together whether we will face extinction or achieve further progress, and what we should prioritize and create for the future.

Sapiens is Yuval Harari's bold and brilliant attempt to understand the past in order to understand the present.
We talk about the past to understand the great technological advancements we are experiencing and must make.
What makes this book special is that it organizes human history into a framework we can understand today.


Society persists through fiction, and religion, as well as the money, laws, and human rights that sustain society, are all human creations.
None of these exist beyond stories made up and passed down by people.
Ultimately, Sapiens, with their ability to believe this fiction, became loyal to all powers, from the state to corporations.
This book is bound to be very meaningful to Sapiens living in Korea today, who go to work on weekdays and engage in religious activities on weekends.


Recommendation

“A book that asks the most important questions about history and the modern world.
“You can’t help but love this book.”
Jared Diamond (professor, UCLA, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel)

“A grand narrative of human civilization that tells how humans, once hunter-gatherers, developed into the societies and economies of today!”
-Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO)

“It’s dazzling.
I've read countless books, but Sapiens is the best book on human history.
“I have never read a better book.”
-Henning Mankell (Swedish novelist, author of the Detective Wallander series)