A Brief History of Humankind
0099590085
Yuval Noah Harari
Notes
…a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body…In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2–3% of total body weight, but it consumes 25% of the body’s energy when the body is at rest. By comparison, the brains of other apes require only 8% of rest-time energy.
Since long intestines and large brains are both massive energy consumers, it’s hard to have both. By shortening the intestines and decreasing their energy consumption, cooking inadvertently opened the way to the jumbo brains of Neanderthals and Sapiens.
Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.
…our brains and minds are adapted to a life of hunting and gathering…the average forager had wider, deeper and more varied knowledge of her immediate surroundings than most of her modern descendants. The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.
(A few) plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.
…the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.
One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.
A person who does not crave cannot suffer.
The modern capitalist economy must constantly increase production if it is to survive…
The rich take great care managing their assets and investments, while the less well heeled go into debt buying cars and televisions they don’t really need.
Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health.