ᠬᠥᠮᠥᠨ ᠲᠥᠷᠥᠯᠬᠢᠲᠡᠨ ᠤ ᠲᠣᠪᠴᠢ ᠲᠡᠦᠬᠡ （ᠠᠩᠭ᠍ᠯᠢ ᠬᠡᠯᠡᠨ ᠤ ᠬᠡᠪᠯᠡᠯ） ----- ᠢᠥᠸᠠᠯ᠂ ᠾᠡᠷᠠᠷᠢ . （ᠢᠰᠷᠧᠯ） pdf

English translation copyright © 2 0 1 4 by Yuval Noah Harari Cloth edition published 2 0 1 4 Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Harvill Secker First published in Hebrew in Israel in 2 0 1 1 by Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir Signal Books is an imprint of McClelland temperamental youths chanullngagainst the dictates of society and weary elders who just wanted to be left in peace; chest-thumping machos trying to impress the local beauty and wise oldmatriarchs who had already seen it all. These archaic humans loved, played, formed close friendships and competed for status and power – but so didchimpanzees, baboons and elephants. There was nothing special about them. Nobody, least of all humans themselves, had any inkling that their descendantswould one day walk on the moon, split the atom, fathom the genetic code and write history books. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humansis that they were insigninullcant animals with no more impact on their environment than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.Biologists classify organisms into species. Animals are said to belong to the same species if they tend to mate with each other, giving birth to fertile onullspring.Horses and donkeys have a recent common ancestor and share many physical traits. But they show little sexual interest in one another. They will mate ifinduced to do so – but their onullspring, called mules, are sterile. Mutations in donkey DNA can therefore never cross over to horses, or vice versa. The two typesof animals are consequently considered two distinct species, moving along separate evolutionary paths. By contrast, a bulldog and a spaniel may look verydinullerent, but they are members of the same species, sharing the same DNA pool. They will happily mate and their puppies will grow up to pair onull with other dogsand produce more puppies. Species that evolved from a common ancestor are bunched together under theheading ‘genus’ (plural genera). Lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars are dinullerent species within the genus Panthera. Biologists label organisms with a two-part Latinname, genus followed by species. Lions, for example, are called Panthera leo, the species leo of the genus Panthera. Presumably, everyone reading this book is aHomo sapiens – the species sapiens (wise) of the genus Homo (man). Genera in their turn are grouped into families, such as the cats (lions, cheetahs,house cats), the dogs (wolves, foxes, jackals) and the elephants (elephants, mammoths, mastodons). All members of a family trace their lineage back to afounding matriarch or patriarch. All cats, for example, from the smallest house kitten to the most ferocious lion, share a common feline ancestor who lived about2 5 million years ago. Homo sapiens, too, belongs to a family. This banal fact used to be one ofhistory’s most closely guarded secrets. Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan bereft of family, lacking siblings or cousins,and most importantly, without parents. But that’s just not the case. Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes.Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had twodaughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother. Skeletons in the Closet Homo sapiens has kept hidden an even more disturbing secret. Not only do wepossess an abundance of uncivilised cousins, once upon a time we had quite a few brothers and sisters as well. We are used to thinking about ourselves as the onlyhumans, because for the last 1 0 ,0 0 0 years, our species has indeed been the only human species around. Yet the real meaning of the word human is ‘an animalbelonging to the genus Homo’, and there used to be many other species of this genus besides Homo sapiens. Moreover, as we shall see in the last chapter of thebook, in the not so distant future we might again have to contend with non- sapiens humans. To clarify this point, I will often use the term ‘Sapiens’ to denotemembers of the species Homo sapiens, while reserving the term ‘human’ to refer to all extant members of the genus Homo.Humans nullrst evolved in East Africa about 2 .5 million years ago from an earlier genus of apes called Australopithecus, which means ‘Southern Ape’. About 2 millionyears ago, some of these archaic men and women left their homeland to journey through and settle vast areas of North Africa, Europe and Asia. Since survival inthe snowy forests of northern Europe required dinullerent traits than those needed to stay alive in Indonesia’s steaming jungles, human populations evolved in dinullerentdirections. The result was several distinct species, to each of which scientists have assigned a pompous Latin name. 2 . Our siblings, according to speculative reconstructions (left to right): Homo rudolfe nsis (East Africa); Homo e re ctus (East Asia); and Homo ne ande rthale nsis (Europe and western Asia). All are humans. Humans in Europe and western Asia evolved into Homo neanderthalensis (‘Man from the Neander Valley), popularly referred to simply as ‘Neanderthals’.Neanderthals, bulkier and more muscular than us Sapiens, were well adapted to the cold climate of Ice Age western Eurasia. The more eastern regions of Asia werepopulated by Homo erectus, ‘Upright Man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record isunlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is reallyout of our league. On the island of Java, in Indonesia, lived Homo soloensis, ‘Man from the SoloValley’, who was suited to life in the tropics. On another Indonesian island – the small island of Flores – archaic humans underwent a process of dwarnullng. Humansnullrst reached Flores when the sea level was exceptionally low, and the island was easily accessible from the mainland. When the seas rose again, some people weretrapped on the island, which was poor in resources. Big people, who need a lot of food, died nullrst. Smaller fellows survived much better. Over the generations, thepeople of Flores became dwarves. This unique species, known by scientists as Homo nulloresiensis, reached a maximum height of only one metre and weighed nomore than twenty-nullve kilograms. They were nevertheless able to produce stone tools, and even managed occasionally to hunt down some of the island’s elephants– though, to be fair, the elephants were a dwarf species as well. In 2 0 1 0 another lost sibling was rescued from oblivion, when scientistsexcavating the Denisova Cave in Siberia discovered a fossilised nullnger bone. Genetic analysis proved that the nullnger belonged to a previously unknown humanspecies, which was named Homo denisova. Who knows how many lost relatives of ours are waiting to be discovered in other caves, on other islands, and in otherclimes. While these humans were evolving in Europe and Asia, evolution in East Africadid not stop. The cradle of humanity continued to nurture numerous new species, such as Homo rudolfensis, ‘Man from Lake Rudolf’, Homo ergaster, ‘Working Man’,and eventually our own species, which we’ve immodestly named Homo sapiens, ‘Wise Man’.The members of some of these species were massive and others were dwarves. Some were fearsome hunters and others meek plant-gatherers. Some lived only ona single island, while many roamed over continents. But all of them belonged to the genus Homo. They were all human beings.It’s a common fallacy to envision these species as arranged in a straight line of descent, with Ergaster begetting Erectus, Erectus begetting the Neanderthals, andthe Neanderthals evolving into us. This linear model gives the mistaken impression that at any particular moment only one type of human inhabited theearth, and that all earlier species were merely older models of ourselves. The truth is that from about 2 million years ago until around 1 0 ,0 0 0 years ago, the worldwas home, at one and the same time, to several human species. And why not? Today there are many species of foxes, bears and pigs. The earth of a hundredmillennia ago was walked by at least six dinullerent species of man. It’s our current exclusivity, not that multi-species past, that is peculiar – and perhapsincriminating. As we will shortly see, we Sapiens have good reasons to repress the memory of our siblings. The Cost of Thinking Despite their many dinullerences, all human species share several denullningcharacteristics. Most notably, humans have extraordinarily large brains compared to other animals. Mammals weighing sixty kilograms have an average brain sizeof 2 0 0 cubic centimetres. The earliest men and women, 2 .5 million years ago, had brains of about 6 0 0 cubic centimetres. Modern Sapiens sport a brain averaging1 ,2 0 0 –1 ,4 0 0 cubic centimetres. Neanderthal brains were even bigger. That evolution should select for larger brains may seem to us like, well, a no-brainer. We are so enamoured of our high intelligence that we assume that when it comes to cerebral power, more must be better. But if that were the case, thefeline family would also have produced cats who could do calculus. Why is genus Homo the only one in the entire animal kingdom to have come up with suchmassive thinking machines? The fact is that a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body. It’s not easy tocarry around, especially when encased inside a massive skull. It’s even harder to fuel. In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2 –3 per cent of total bodyweight, but it consumes 2 5 per cent of the body’s energy when the body is at rest. By comparison, the brains of other apes require only 8 per cent of rest-timeenergy. Archaic humans paid for their large brains in two ways. Firstly, they spent more time in search of food. Secondly, their muscles atrophied. Like a governmentdiverting money from defence to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons. It’s hardly a foregone conclusion that this is a good strategy forsurvival on the savannah. A chimpanzee can’t win an argument with a Homo sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll.Today our big brains pay onull nicely, because we can produce cars and guns that enable us to move much faster than chimps, and shoot them from a safe distanceinstead of wrestling. But cars and guns are a recent phenomenon. For more than 2 million years, human neural networks kept growing and growing, but apart fromsome nullint knives and pointed sticks, humans had precious little to show for it. What then drove forward the evolution of the massive human brain during those 2million years? Frankly, we don’t know. Another singular human trait is that we walk upright on two legs. Standing up,it’s easier to scan the savannah for game or enemies, and arms that are unnecessary for locomotion are freed for other purposes, like throwing stones orsignalling. The more things these hands could do, the more successful their owners were, so evolutionary pressure brought about an increasing concentration ofnerves and nullnely tuned muscles in the palms and nullngers. As a result, humans can perform very intricate tasks with their hands. In particular, they can produce anduse sophisticated tools. The nullrst evidence for tool production dates from about 2 .5 million years ago, and the manufacture and use of tools are the criteria by whicharchaeologists recognise ancient humans. Yet walking upright has its downside. The skeleton of our primate ancestorsdeveloped for millions of years to support a creature that walked on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adjusting to an upright position was quite achallenge, especially when the scanullolding had to support an extra-large cranium. Humankind paid for its lofty vision and industrious hands with backaches and stinullnecks. Women paid extra. An upright gait required narrower hips, constricting thebirth canal – and this just when babies’ heads were getting bigger and bigger. Death in childbirth became a major hazard for human females. Women who gavebirth earlier, when the infants brain and head were still relatively small and supple, fared better and lived to have more children. Natural selectionconsequently favoured earlier births. And, indeed, compared to other animals, humans are born prematurely, when many of their vital systems are still under-developed. A colt can trot shortly after birth; a kitten leaves its mother to forage on its own when it is just a few weeks old. Human babies are helpless, dependentfor many years on their elders for sustenance, protection and education. This fact has contributed greatly both to humankind’s extraordinary socialabilities and to its unique social problems. Lone mothers could hardly forage enough food for their onullspring and themselves with needy children in tow.Raising children required constant help from other family members and neighbours. It takes a tribe to raise a human. Evolution thus favoured thosecapable of forming strong social ties. In addition, since humans are born underdeveloped, they can be educated and socialised to a far greater extent thanany other animal. Most mammals emerge from the womb like glazed earthenware emerging from a kiln – any attempt at remoulding will scratch or break them.Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. This is why todaywe can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist, capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving. * We assume that a large brain, the use of tools, superior learning abilities andcomplex social structures are huge advantages. It seems self-evident that these have made humankind the most powerful animal on earth. But humans enjoyedall of these advantages for a full 2 million years during which they remained weak and marginal creatures. Thus humans who lived a million years ago, despite theirbig brains and sharp stone tools, dwelt in constant fear of predators, rarely hunted large game, and subsisted mainly by gathering plants, scooping up insects,stalking small animals, and eating the carrion left behind by other more powerful carnivores.One of the most common uses of early stone tools was to crack open bones in order to get to the marrow. Some researchers believe this was our original niche.Just as woodpeckers specialise in extracting insects from the trunks of trees, the nullrst humans specialised in extracting marrow from bones. Why marrow? Well,suppose you observe a pride of lions take down and devour a giranulle. You wait patiently until they’re done. But it’s still not your turn because first the hyenas andjackals – and you don’t dare interfere with them scavenge the leftovers. Only then would you and your band dare approach the carcass, look cau