After reading A Brief History of Mankind, you must have a lot to share. At this time, you need to make a good record and write down your thoughts on the brief history of mankind. The following are my thoughts on the brief history of mankind in 2023, which I carefully arranged for you, hoping to help you.
A brief history of mankind in 2023 (selected article 1) Listen to the name A brief history of mankind is a book about human history. However, it is completely different from the historical narrative I have seen. Most history books like to focus on a certain generation or a major historical event, and the focus of their writing lies in the clear main line. Others tell the past with the replacement of civilization as a unit, make a macro summary, and focus on the development and replacement of civilization. However, the author of A Brief History of Mankind described something different. He has a big brain hole, and his focus is not on the country or civilization, but on mankind. How did mankind change from a weak person to a species that can stand at the top of the food chain, and where will mankind go? The author will interpret them for you one by one.
Around the whole book, the word "cognition" is unavoidable. In the traditional understanding, human beings learned to evolve because of natural selection, but the author believes that Homo sapiens eliminated all competitors because of "cognition", and at the same time, "cognitive revolution", "agricultural revolution" and "scientific revolution" made Homo sapiens step by step from the bottom of the food chain to the top. But what shocked me more was the author's point of view. For example, in the author's view, the "agricultural revolution" is the biggest scam in history. "The real essence of the agricultural revolution is to let more people live in worse conditions." Far from bringing a new era full of hope, the agricultural revolution has made the working people suffer undue hardships, led a new life that is harder and more unsatisfied than the original gatherers, and prompted mankind to become monotonous, dull and hard from the original leisurely and changeable days.
Imagine from another angle that if agriculture appeared in modern society, would modern people choose the present comfort or hardship, and would it be recognized as a review of history? I can't imagine. However, despite many shortcomings, agriculture has always been the foundation of our modern civilization. Just as history is a combination of contingency and inevitability. The author is unique in that he emphasizes the happiness of Homo sapiens. He is saddened by the aphasia of "man" as a social cell individual in the long river of history, just as he often switches perspectives in his books, from the perspective of livestock raised by human beings to the perspective of crops cultivated by human beings, making a sound to human beings occupying the top of the food chain.
When we live in this world as "Homo sapiens", we should look at this world again with gratitude and humility, and the mystery of this world will quietly bloom like a beautiful flower in the sunshine of hope.
A Brief History of Mankind in 2023 (Part II) It's been almost a month since I read A Brief History of Mankind. This book is easy to understand, but because of the author's solid historical knowledge and unique perspective, I didn't read it, but digested it while reading, so I only read half a month.
For the review of this book, I want to quote from the back cover:
This is the best book of its kind; Large in scale but by no means ordinary; It is contemporary and not fancy, and its concept is shocking, but it is by no means a simple opponent. Everyone can find a part in the book to discuss with others, but it is good to know which part and why. -Steven Gunny, Dean of the School of History, Oxford University
Here are some reading feelings and notes:
Part I: Cognitive revolution.
The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and humans very similar to modern people began to appear 2.5 million years ago. 2.5 million years, this is an unimaginable number for every human individual, but in the two million years after the birth of human beings, human beings have not made great strides. The reason may be that the time line required for evolution is too long, or it may be that it requires certain opportunities. Therefore, in the first 2 million years, the progress of human evolution seemed to be stagnant compared with that since the industrial revolution. Even at that time, human beings still needed to eat the leftovers of carnivores. The evidence to infer this is that one of the most common uses of early stone tools was to break bones so that humans could eat the bone marrow inside. Then it was not until 400,000 years ago that several races began to hunt large prey. All this has broken the balance when Homo sapiens jumped to the top of the food chain 654.38 million years ago. This change not only makes the ecosystem unprepared, but also makes human beings at a loss. Many disasters in the future human history, whether it is wars that bring endless suffering or the catastrophe of ecological encounters, actually originated from this hasty position jump.
We are all descendants of Homo sapiens. From 2.5 million years ago to 30,000 years ago, there were many different kinds of human beings on the earth, such as:
Neanderthals distributed in Europe and West Asia were between 400,000 and 30,000 years ago.
Homo erectus, distributed in Asia, is also the longest-lived human from 2 million to 50,000 years.
The lone ranger in Java, Indonesia
The Fo Roriz people on the Indonesian island of Fo Roriz are dwarfs whose height does not exceed 1 meter.
The denisovans of Siberia
Rudolph people in East Africa were 2 million years ago.
Learning to use fire is undoubtedly a great leap in human evolution. Fire will not only cause chemical reactions in food, but also change organisms: after cooking, germs and parasites in food will be killed, and eating cooked food will greatly reduce the chewing time of human beings. It took about 600 thousand years from the initial unintentional understanding of fire to mastering the skills of using fire. It was not until 300,000 years ago that the ancestors of Homo erectus, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were able to skillfully use fire.
The cognitive revolution originated about 70 thousand years ago, which is the starting point for history to exist independently of biology. During the cognitive revolution, Homo sapiens ruled the world and destroyed or replaced all other human beings. Homo sapiens can rule the earth because homo sapiens has a large brain, can use tools, has extraordinary learning ability and complex social structure. We don't know the cause of the cognitive revolution, but it is generally believed that an accidental genetic mutation changed the internal connection mode of Homo sapiens' brain, making them think in an unprecedented way. After the development of language, it is endowed with the most unique function-"discussing fictional things". This evolution made Homo sapiens spread from East Africa to Arabia 70,000 years ago, and soon swept the whole Eurasia.
Discussing and compiling fictional things makes human beings more and more suitable for unity and cooperation. At first, "gossip" made human beings have cohesion, and gradually people compiled more stories and rules to make human groups, villages and even countries operate in an orderly manner.
Before the agricultural revolution, most people lived in small tribes, with dozens to hundreds of people in each tribe. People live by gathering. Homo sapiens colleagues who collect food and raw materials are also constantly increasing their knowledge, such as their understanding of the living environment, the nutrition of food, the distinction between poisonous and nontoxic plants, the living habits of animals, the production of simple jobs and so on. Due to the diversity of food, ancient gatherers rarely had hunger or malnutrition.
"German Staade" ivory lion statue 32,000 years ago; 1the bones of a 50-year-old woman and a pair of puppies in northern Israel before 2000; 15000~20000 years ago, a bird-headed man mural in Lascaux Cave; The hand cave murals in Argentina 9000 years ago. From these archaeological discoveries, we can infer the life and thoughts of ancient collectors. Perhaps at that time, their concepts of religion, politics and war were vague, but unfortunately this silent curtain covered tens of thousands of years of history. In these years, there may be wars and revolutions, passionate religious movements, profound philosophical thoughts and unparalleled artistic masterpieces. But even if our guess is close to the truth, we won't know.
In the process of dominating the world, Homo sapiens will inevitably break into some virgin land that no one has set foot in before. About 45,000 years ago, the Homo sapiens Development Office in Indonesia was the first human society that could sail. On this basis, the first batch of people who moved to Australia appeared, and it was these people who brought disasters to the local large animals. Large animals themselves reproduce very slowly, and they have no time to defend themselves against human attacks. What's more, when Homo sapiens arrived in Australia, he mastered the fire farming technology and created our present Australia under the condition of wanton destruction of the ecological environment. Eucalyptus plants escaped the disaster because of fire resistance, and koalas that feed on eucalyptus plants naturally became lucky.
Many people think that the industrial revolution has accelerated the destructive power of human beings to nature and led to a large number of extinctions. But the fact is that since Homo sapiens conquered the earth, all kinds of animals and plants have been divorced from natural selection or elimination. Extinction has never stopped since ancient times. Man is the smartest creature on the earth, but he wantonly destroys the space on which he lives. From this point of view, are humans really smart?
The earth has an ice age every/kloc-0.0 million years. Can we imagine that any ice age will push mankind to extinction? After tens of thousands of years, the traces of human existence on the earth will disappear without a trace. Millions or tens of millions of years later, if new intelligent creatures appear on the earth, will they know nothing about our existence on the earth?
After reading A Brief History of Mankind in 2023 (Part III), everyone has different interpretations of happiness: perhaps, happiness lies in the pursuit of happiness; Perhaps, happiness lies in having goals and ideals, and striving for * * * * ... But in the book A Brief History of Mankind, I found its true meaning!
Nowadays, many people only look at our superficial development, but don't go into it: are we really happier than our ancestors? A Brief History of Mankind tells the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens for 70,000 years. In fact, since the cognitive revolution, we have been living in an illusory world. The so-called money, empire and religion all come from human imagination. These imaginations have made us develop, but they have also made human ambitions more and more inflated, and then we can't extricate ourselves from the abyss of desire. Desire will not only bring people pressure and pain, but also make mankind extinct!
Confucius said: fame and fortune are like clouds. In my opinion, why should we restrain ourselves and force ourselves to work hard for life because of those fame and fortune? What we lack is a contented heart. The book wrote: "Now the Egyptian people have a more complete medical system and more comfortable houses than their ancestors, but there are still many people complaining about the poverty of life and the injustice of fate." It is precisely because they have an insatiable heart that they constantly put unnecessary pressure on themselves.
In fact, we should not only learn to be content, but also learn to seek truth and be ourselves! We don't need to rejoice in success, let alone be sad because of setbacks, which will only consume our minds. We don't need to pursue those subjective feelings at all. In the long run, your mind will become clear and clean, that is, it will not be polluted by the noise of the outside world, nor will it be affected by the so-called "pleasure", and naturally there will be no more pain.
Happiness is contentment; Happiness is watching the flowers bloom and fall, laughing at the clouds rolling and relaxing; Happiness is to seek the truth and be yourself!
A Brief History of Mankind in 2023 (Part IV) I like the trilogy A Brief History of Mankind, A Brief History of the Future and A Brief History of Today by Israeli historian yuval Harari very much. There is a famous saying in ancient Rome: "A person who doesn't know his pre-birth history will always be a child." Every time in history is like a crossroads. Although there is only one-way street from the past to the present, there are countless forks in the road in the future. So when the epidemic was at home, I thought of rereading A Brief History of Mankind.
A brief history of mankind is a short book, but it combs the whole development process of human beings from the appearance of Homo sapiens to the present and future in chronological order. This book identifies three key nodes in human history: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution and the scientific revolution.
The cognitive revolution refers to the emergence of new ways of thinking and communication between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, which can convey facts and information through language. Before the cognitive revolution, human was a primate, which was not much different from other animals. They live by camping, hunting and gathering, and they have to avoid attacks from other wild animals. After the cognitive revolution, legends, myths, gods and religions appeared. Through these virtual imaginations, people have formed the same cultural ties, the scope of cooperation and activities has been greatly expanded, the scale of tribes has been expanded, and their abilities have been improved. They have begun to become the dominant force in nature and even have the ability to destroy other species. Before the cognitive revolution, human beings only had biological characteristics, and then history came into being, with human history in the cultural sense.
There are two interesting paradoxes about agricultural society in the book.
The first question is whether wheat uses humans or humans use wheat. Large-scale wheat planting activities have played a great role in human reproduction and development, but at the same time, wheat itself has also achieved great development of species. We can say that human beings use wheat to speed up reproduction, but from the perspective of wheat, it is wheat that uses human beings to expand to the whole world. This is a very novel and interesting angle.
The second question is whether the large-scale cultivation of human beings has increased happiness or decreased happiness. On the one hand, large-scale agricultural cultivation enables human beings to have more food, avoid the pain of hunger, and also enable human beings to settle down and display business and culture, which is undoubtedly a good thing. On the other hand, large-scale agricultural cultivation makes human beings firmly bound by land and crops, and they have to carry out agricultural production day after day with their backs to the loess, which is more difficult than nomadic collection for a living. From this point of view, the agricultural activities originally carried out by human beings to increase happiness have made farmers very tired, and it is hard to say happiness. A series of "progress" that made life easier eventually became a heavy yoke on human beings. This is indeed a paradox.
Since modern times, especially since 17 and 18 centuries, along with the two engines of capitalism and imperialism, science and technology have also made earth-shaking progress, enabling mankind to gradually discover, recognize and conquer the world. Nowadays, science and technology are not only the source of value creation, but also greatly change the way of life of human beings, and human beings can even reverse the forces of nature with the help of bioengineering. The future world must be shaped by science and technology, and it must be worth looking forward to.
After reading this book, you seem to be shuttling between time tunnels, and you can clearly see how we humans have changed from animals to gods who dominate the world. 70,000 years ago, human beings were just an insignificant animal living in the corner of Africa, but in the next few thousand years, Homo sapiens became the master of the whole earth and the nightmare of the ecosystem. Today, it seems that Homo sapiens can enter the realm of God in just one step, not only promising eternal youth, but also possessing the power to create and destroy everything. Unfortunately, what Homo sapiens did on earth is not very proud. Although we dominate the environment, it has not reduced the suffering of the earth. Although famine and war are gradually decreasing, the living conditions of other animals are deteriorating at an unprecedented rate. Didn't our coronavirus epidemic start with a little bat in people's mouth?
Bacon said that reading history makes people wise. Recently, I also read A Brief History of Chinese Philosophy. Mencius said that everything is ready, and I must be sincere and reverse. Cheng Hao, a representative of Neo-Confucianism, also thinks that the real meaning of life is life. They think that everything has the tendency of life, which constitutes the benevolence of heaven and earth. In the face of this epidemic, as human beings, I think each of us should think deeply. We have more power now than ever, but we still seem to be dissatisfied. In order to seek our own comfort and entertainment, we have set off one disaster after another for the surrounding animals and ecosystems. A person may surpass the whole society and have a larger whole, namely the universe. Many philosophers in ancient China were discussing the theory of cosmogenesis, among which Mencius put forward the idea of "harmony between man and nature", which means that we human beings are not only members of society, but also members of the universe. We should have this consciousness and do all kinds of things for the benefit of the universe.
In fact, all the beauty in this world comes from each of us, every creature in our nature, including the vast and selfless universe on which we live. The harmony between man and nature, let us put down our greed, strive to write a more glorious history of mankind and create a better future for us.
A Brief History of Mankind in 2023 (Selected Part V) This book introduces the development history of mankind from its birth to the present, including several stages such as cognitive revolution, agricultural revolution, human integration, scientific revolution, and the influence of each major change on mankind.
Interested students can have a look and have another understanding of the world.
Write the following content casually!
With the development of human history, the influence of human beings on nature has gradually increased, and the laws of nature may change because of human beings. At the same time, the uncertainty of human development is growing. Was it replaced by other creatures? Or was it destroyed by the war? Or enslaved by something created by human hands?
There are more and more kinds of science and technology, which are really needed by human evolution. Develop technology for money? Or to improve human life?
The living space of mankind has changed from a small ethnic group to a "global village". Under the condition of expanding the scope of activities and broadening our horizons, we can find people with the same hobbies all over the world. But when we embrace the imaginary spiritual "community", we also alienate the actual "community" around us. Will the imaginary "community" make us less lonely than the actual "community"?
Now it is more "safe" than before, and there is no need to worry about being eaten by wild animals. The war is only ignited in a few areas. Especially in the history of China, there may not be a dynasty as safe and "free" as it is now.
Speaking of freedom, freedom and equality are born on the opposite side of contradiction. It seems that the problems of individual freedom and human equality cannot be solved from the beginning of the agricultural revolution. We have never been so free to choose our beliefs as we are now, a capitalist, a Buddhist, a Hui Muslim, a producer and a cynic ... Now, it seems that these people sitting together for dinner will not make people feel anything wrong, but in retrospect, it goes without saying that even in the last century, this scene may be unimaginable. What we are facing now may not be the conflict between beliefs, but more about not knowing what we believe.
History is gone, the future can be expected, cherish the present.