Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — From Animals to Gods
Based on "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — From Animals to Gods," this course is organized around four major parts — the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Unification of Humankind, and the Scientific Revolution — and examines key topics such as the evolution of Homo sapiens, empires, money, religion, capitalism, and the technological revolution, helping learners build a macro-level historical perspective.
Course Overview
Content Summary
This course uses Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind—From Animals to Gods as its blueprint, unfolding across four major parts: the Cognitive Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Unification of Humankind, and the Scientific Revolution. It examines key topics such as the evolution of Homo sapiens, empires, money, religion, capitalism, and the technological revolution, helping learners build a macro-historical perspective.
From the Cognitive Revolution to the Scientific Revolution, understanding how Homo sapiens became the masters of the Earth.
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Acknowledgments: The course content is based on Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind—From Animals to Gods and Lin Junhong's Chinese translation. We hereby express our gratitude to the author, translator, and publisher.
Learning Objectives
- Outline the timeline from the Big Bang to the Cognitive Revolution, Agricultural Revolution, and Scientific Revolution, understanding the place of Homo sapiens history within a larger evolutionary scale.
- Distinguish among biological classifications such as species, genus, and family, explaining Homo sapiens' position within the genus Homo and the other human species that once coexisted.
- Explain the evolutionary costs and benefits among brain size growth, bipedal walking, premature birth, and social cooperation.
- Analyze how fire and cooking changed human digestion, energy allocation, body structure, and impact on the environment.
- Explain the time frame of the Cognitive Revolution, possible genetic mutation causes, and why it became the turning point in Homo sapiens history.
- Distinguish animal communication from Homo sapiens language, explaining why 'discussing fictional things' is the most unique function of Homo sapiens language.
- Analyze how the gossip theory, the 150-person cooperation threshold, and fictional stories expanded the scale of social cooperation.
- Using Peugeot and limited liability companies as examples, explain how imagined realities, legal fictions, and social constructs operate.
- Understand how evolutionary psychology explains modern humans' preference for high-calorie diets and other forager legacy traits.
- Outline the main characteristics of hunter-gatherer societies in terms of diet, health, working hours, dwelling, and knowledge and skills.
- Compare different theories about ancient social structure (ancient communes vs. monogamous nuclear families) and tendencies toward violence.
- Explain the core claims of animist beliefs and describe how archaeological evidence such as the Sunghir burials reveals sociopolitical norms.