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LitCharts | September 27 2024
Until about 10,000 years ago, Sapiens foraged for food. Our tendency to binge on sugary foods today is a remnant of our ancient foraging past. Sweet fruits are a good source of energy. It benefitted ancient Sapiens to gorge on fruits (before other animals got to them) whenever they crossed paths with fruit trees. Theorists also attempt to connect modern social dynamics with our ancient history. Some think ancient Sapiens mated with multiple partners and raised their children communally, like chimpanzees do. Others argue that monogamy and the nuclear family are intrinsic to our nature. Harari will explore Sapiens’ history between the Cognitive revolution (70,000 years ago) and the Agricultural Revolution (12,000 years ago) to offer his own insights.
It’s hard to speculate about the hunter-gatherer period of Sapiens’ history because there are so few artifacts from that time period (in contrast to modern Sapiens life today, which is littered with artifacts like cars, clothes, phones, books, art, trash, and more). Many theorists debate over the “natural way of life” in ancient Sapiens hunter-gatherer societies. However, Harari thinks that there’s no such thing. He argues that—like modern hunter-gatherer societies—ancient Sapiens’ lifestyles were very ethnically and culturally diverse, partly because the Cognitive Revolution enabled a wide diversity of norms and lifestyles, based on the myths people believed in. Harari paints a picture of ancient foraging societies based on the sparse data that is available about life in that time. In stressing that “loneliness and privacy were rare,” he subtly hints that agricultural (and subsequent industrial) societies are much more isolating, suggesting that a laborer’s life in an agricultural or industrial society is actually unhappier than the life of a forager. He even suggests that Sapiens’ brain size decreased after the foraging era ended—because modern humans don’t need to know much about our natural surroundings to survive, and we depend much more heavily on others than foragers did.
The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution (about 15,000 years ago). They may have joined the human pack thousands of years earlier. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting, and as an alarm system against wild beasts and human intruders. With the passing of generations, the two species co-evolved to communicate well with each other. Dogs that were most attentive to the needs and feelings of their human companions got extra care and food, and were more likely to survive.
Simultaneously, dogs learned to manipulate people for their own needs. A 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.
These handprints were about 9,000 years ago. It looks as if these long-dead hands are reaching towards us from within the rock. This is one of the most moving relics of the ancient forager world – but nobody knows what it means.
Archaeologists then discovered an even more interesting tomb. It contained two skeletons, buried head to head. One belonged to a boy aged about twelve or thirteen, and the other to a girl of about nine or ten. The boy was covered with 5,000 ivory beads. He wore a fox-tooth hat and a belt with 250 fox teeth (at least sixty foxes had to have their teeth pulled to get that many). The girl was adorned with 5,250 ivory beads. Both children were surrounded by statuettes and various ivory objects. A skilled craftsman (or craftswoman) probably needed about forty-five minutes to prepare a single ivory bead. I
A painting from Lascaux Cave, c.15,000–20,000 years ago.
Most scholars agree that animistic beliefs were common among ancient foragers. Animism (from ‘anima’, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ in Latin) is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicate directly with humans. Thus, animists may believe that the big rock at the top of the hill has desires and needs. The rock might be angry about something that people did and rejoice over some other action. The rock might admonish people or ask for favours.
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