About 2 million years ago, human species similar to modern people appeared on the earth, which we call the genus. There are many branches of the genus Homo, and there are at least five known species: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, Thoreau, craftsmen and so on. These races do not develop linearly, but coexist at the same time. For a long time, Homo sapiens was not so prominent compared with other races. Homo sapiens had a conflict with Neanderthals, but it ended in the failure of Homo sapiens.
About 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens set out from East Africa and gradually conquered (extinct) other races and large mammals, becoming the overlord on the earth. Homo sapiens can conquer the world because of its unique language. Other animals also have languages, but their languages can only convey simple information. For example, monkeys can also communicate with each other, and they can say "Look out, there is a lion". Researchers used a tape recorder to record the cries of monkeys when they found lions and then played them when there were no lions. As soon as the monkeys heard the recording, they quickly climbed up the tree and looked around in horror. However, the message that Homo sapiens can convey is much more complicated than "Be careful, there are lions". Homo sapiens often gossip together and even describe fictional things that don't exist.
Cognitive Revolution: Imaginary Reality
In the cognitive revolution, Herari pointed out that one of the main differences between Homo sapiens and other creatures is that human beings have imagination and can make fiction; On this basis, the author puts forward a term throughout the book-imaginary reality: "imaginary reality" refers to what everyone believes. As long as this belief exists, it is powerful enough to influence the world.
The development of human society today depends entirely on the skill of "imagination". We "invented" concepts such as words, money, religion, law, nation, country and company. In other words, many recognized things in reality are actually imagined by human beings, but this imagination is not one person's imagination, but the imagination of all mankind.
Although office workers are either in the company or on their way to the company every day, the word company does not exist naturally. What is a company? You are not a company, and even everyone in your company is not a company. The company is just a legal concept. The company is purely a human imagination. If we register a company and get the approval of the relevant government departments, then this company will exist in your imagination.
The same is true of money and law. These things only work for humans. Beyond human imagination, money actually does not exist. Now we can use numbers to represent money, which is enough to show that money is just an imaginary concept.
The advantage of Homo sapiens over other races is that Homo sapiens evolved the prefrontal lobe of the brain, which is mainly responsible for imagination. With imagination, the cooperation ability of homo sapiens is obviously enhanced. For example, they can negotiate with other homo sapiens tribes and unite to attack Neanderthals, and Neanderthals can only be defeated.
Agricultural revolution: the biggest scam in history
Homo sapiens still lived by hunting and gathering for a long time after occupying the whole world. This kind of life has many advantages.
Judging from the labor intensity, the labor intensity of the gathering society is far lower than that of the agricultural society and modern society. Historians estimate that the gathering tribes hunt once every three days on average and gather for 3-6 hours a day, which can meet the needs of all colonies. What we now call "lying flat" is similar to the gathering life of our ancestors. It can be said that human beings have always had the gene of "lying flat".
From the point of view of nutrition, the collected food is diverse, so the nutrition is balanced. In order to avoid collecting toxic food, everyone in the collection agency is an expert in animals and plants, and their understanding of various animals and plants far exceeds that of modern people.
In terms of physical quality. Because you often need to climb trees and chase prey, you are stronger. According to the research, the adults of the collecting tribe have very good physical fitness, because people with poor physical fitness usually can't survive.
About 1 10,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to domesticate plants and animals, which started the agricultural revolution. Since consciously planting wheat, rice and other crops, human beings have begun to settle down. With food and shelter, the population has also increased rapidly, and the population gathering in society has been growing steadily or slowly. This has fallen into a "trap". Agricultural production has led to the rapid growth of population, and after population growth, more food is needed, and the speed of food growth always fails to keep up with the speed of population growth. Therefore, our farmers have hardly had a good life for generations, and they are always worried about not having enough to eat.
Homo sapiens gave up the leisurely gathering life and started farming life under the scorching sun every day. The author thinks this is "the biggest scam in history". Friends from the countryside should know the hardships of farmers. As written in "Compassion for Farmers", during the busy farming season, farmers need to sow, transplant, weed and harvest with their backs to the loess, whether it is hot sun or downpour. The whole process is very hard.
Therefore, from the logic of individual happiness, it is a mistake for Homo sapiens to choose agriculture, which means a more difficult life. However, Homo sapiens' entry into agricultural society is not the result of someone's choice, but follows the basic laws of biology. There is a view in biology that if we want to measure the success of a species' evolution, the standard is the number of copies of its DNA helix in the world. If there are no more DNA copies of a species in the world, it means that the species has become extinct, and if there are many individuals of a species with their DNA copies in the world, it means that the species has evolved successfully and thrived. From this point of view, 1000 copy of DNA is always better than 100 copy.
Although the agricultural society reduces the happiness of farmers, it is more advanced than the collection society. Agricultural tribes have a larger population (more copies of DNA), and they can easily conquer any gathering tribe with a smaller population than them. Therefore, agricultural tribes gradually replaced the gathering tribes and became the mainstream of the world.
The progress of mankind is not the same as the improvement of personal happiness. For example, in today's society, we often encounter the word "just need", and economists believe that some needs are rigid. For example, washing machines, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars and houses are all "just needed", while people hundreds of years ago did not have these needs, but they still lived well. There is no doubt that "just need" is created by science and technology, and scientific and technological progress will create new "just need", and human beings have to pay more labor to meet it. Therefore, more than 100 years ago (19 19), the eight-hour working system was gradually adopted by various countries. In 2022, the productivity of science and technology is several times higher than that of a hundred years ago, but we still have to work eight hours a day. The main reason is that we have to work 8 hours to meet all kinds of newly created "just needs".
Various efforts to make life easier have brought endless troubles to people. How many young college graduates have devoted themselves to big enterprises, engaged in all kinds of hard work, and vowed to work hard to make money so that they can retire at the age of 35 and engage in careers that they are really interested in? But by the age of 35, they found themselves burdened with huge loans to pay for their children's tuition. They felt that they could not do without high-end ingredients and travel holidays. What should they do? Will they drop everything and go back to the wild to pick fruits and dig roots? Of course not, but redouble your efforts and continue to kill yourself.
Therefore, the wheel of history is rolling forward, unaffected by the happiness of a certain group. It only follows the first law of biology: copy the DNA of Homo sapiens as much as possible.
Industrial Revolution: Energy Conversion Revolution
Let's focus on the background of the industrial revolution. Knowing this, you can understand why the industrial revolution first happened in Britain.
1492 After Columbus discovered the New World, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands began to colonize overseas. Britain started late and colonized only some less populated areas on the east coast of the United States in the early days. However, Britain later defeated Spain, the Netherlands and other countries, and its overseas sphere of influence became larger and larger, gradually becoming an immortal empire.
Unlike other countries, Britain not only smashed and robbed colonies, but also was very keen to turn colonial people into customers to sell goods. Before the industrial revolution, the British sold their specialties, such as woolen cloth. With the increasing demand in overseas markets, the British began to raise more sheep to produce more cloth, and cut down forests to feed the sheep. Then winter came, and the British found that wood was needed for cooking and heating, but now there are grasslands everywhere, wood is scarce, and wood prices have risen sharply.
After the shortage of wood, the British turned their attention to cheaper coal. Britain is rich in coal resources, but a lot of coal is buried underground. The British have dug up all the coal on the ground, so they can only dig underground. However, the danger of underground coal mining is great, so it is necessary to prevent gas explosion and water leakage accidents. Underground drainage is quite difficult. At first, it relied on workers to carry it out barrel by barrel. Later, a simple drainage device-waterwheel was invented, which was driven by human or animal power. At that time, a coal mine could drain water with dozens of horses.
In order to improve the drainage efficiency, Newkman invented the steam engine, which vaporizes water by burning coal and promotes the piston operation. This thing needs to burn a lot of coal, which is inefficient and can only be used near coal mines, because coal is the most important thing in coal mines. Newkman steam engine was soon installed in coal mine as the engine of drainage machine. A Newkman steam engine is about 50 horses. And around the clock.
In order to improve the efficiency of coal use, Watt improved the steam engine. He improved Newkman's steam engine in many ways, such as adding a condenser and inventing a crank-gear transmission system to make the straight piston move in a curve, which improved the efficiency of the steam engine by four or five times and expanded the scope of application. Now, not only coal mines can pump water with steam engines, but also all walks of life quickly adopted steam engines, and Britain began the industrial revolution represented by steam engines. For example, in the wool textile industry, the huge overseas market makes the demand for woolen goods in Britain exceed the supply. At that time, Britain still relied on manpower to weave cloth, which was too inefficient to meet the demand of overseas sales. Powerful businessmen urgently need to improve production efficiency, so steam engines are quickly applied to the textile industry.
The early technological progress was mainly through the improvement of tools by craftsmen. The application of the steam engine made the British realize that science and technology are the primary productive forces, just as British overseas colonization brought them huge funds, so they began to invest a lot of money in research and development to reward inventions and creations, and natural science research began to advance by leaps and bounds. Everyone is familiar with what happened later, so we won't start it.
The question here is, why didn't the industrial revolution take place in China? A big reason is that China had a large population and cheap manpower. Just doing some beating things, there is no need and motivation to develop machines at all. The population of Britain is much smaller. After the Middle Ages, the living conditions of British people were better than those of China, mainly because the wages of British workers were three times that of China craftsmen. Therefore, the labor cost in Britain is much more expensive. In order to save money, capitalists urgently need machines to replace manpower.
"The core of the industrial revolution is actually the revolution of energy conversion. We see time and time again that the energy we can use is actually endless. More precisely, the only limitation lies in our ignorance. Every few decades, we can find new energy sources, so the total amount of energy that humans can use is actually increasing. "
The energy on earth comes from solar energy in the final analysis. Fossil energy sources such as coal and oil are formed from the remains of ancient creatures. Plants grow through photosynthesis of sunlight, and animals feed on plants or other animals. Wind energy is an airflow generated by uneven heating, and water energy is formed by evaporation of water after heating and falling to high ground.
The most ideal energy utilization state is the direct utilization of solar energy, which can save all kinds of intermediate links. Moreover, solar energy can be said to be inexhaustible, and a small part of solar energy on the earth can meet the needs of all mankind. Therefore, there is no shortage of energy in the world. The lack of energy stems from human ignorance.
In agricultural society, human labor acts on production tools through manpower and animal power, which are obtained by people and animals converting food into energy, and food crops grow by absorbing solar energy, so the traditional energy conversion chain is: solar energy-plants-animals-manpower (animal power)-production tools. Traditional energy conversion needs the help of human beings (animals), who digest food to get energy and then act on production tools.
Watt improved the steam engine and started the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution represented by the steam engine simplified the energy conversion chain, and the new chain became: coal-steam-production tools. After the power revolution, this chain became: coal/water/wind/solar energy-electricity-production tools. The advantage of the industrial revolution is the liberation of manpower. Since then, machines have replaced workers, and the saved manpower can be used to engage in service industry and mental work. After the invention of the computer, human beings can complete all kinds of complicated work by tapping the keyboard.
As science begins to solve one problem after another, many people begin to believe that human beings can solve all problems by acquiring and applying new knowledge. Poverty, disease, war, famine, old age and death no longer seem to be the inevitable fate of mankind, but only the limitations caused by ignorance.
I spent a lot of time talking about the three revolutions experienced by mankind, which is the fate of mankind as a whole, but personally, these histories are fleeting, and individuals are undoubtedly more concerned about the present and the future. In the long history of mankind, personal happiness is negligible, but when people ask you what is the most important thing in life, you usually answer: "Be happy for yourself and your loved ones." So, what about happiness?
Essence of Happiness: Serotonin, Dopamine and Oxytocin Happiness is a philosophical problem. The ancients studied happiness very much, and put forward that "those who are satisfied are always happy", thinking that as long as they lower their expectations, they can easily be satisfied and then realize happiness.
Both Taoism and Buddhism are obsessed with happiness. Taoism believes that we will be happy if we return to the origin of all things and become primitive people. Taoism often finds a remote forest to practice, while Buddhism believes that if we get rid of human desires and learn to lie flat, we will be happy. Monks in temples should be vegetarian, abstain from drinking and drinking, and chant Buddhist scriptures every day to get rid of other thoughts and pursue the highest state of "nirvana".
However, for most people at the bottom of society, happiness is not that complicated. "As long as I have enough money, I will be very happy." . The results show that money does make people happy, but there is a certain limit, after which the effect is not so obvious. In other words, if you are poor, the more money you have, the happier you will be. But when you are already quite rich, more money will not bring corresponding happiness. When you get a huge asset, you may be happy for a few days, but your mood will soon return to calm. This is easy to understand, because more money has no effect on the lives of rich people, and you should have enjoyed it long ago. Money is just a number in the bank account.
Family and community are much more important than money. The results show that those who have close family ties and the community supports and helps each other are obviously happier. Those who have dysfunctional families and have been unable to integrate into a certain community are obviously unhappy. Among them, marriage is a particularly important factor. Many repeated studies have found that there is a high correlation between a happy marriage and the feeling of happiness, and between marital disharmony and the feeling of pain. And this is true regardless of economic situation or physical health.
Therefore, even a poor and sick person may feel happier than a lonely billionaire if he is surrounded by a partner who loves him, loves his family and is willing to support his community. Of course, the premise is that this person can't really be too poor to live, his illness won't get worse, and he won't continue to feel pain.
In addition, the biochemical mechanism has a great influence on happiness. People who are easily happy by biochemical mechanism may be happy for a long time because of a little insignificant achievement. Unlike some people, no matter how much they have achieved, as long as there are people who are better than themselves, they will never be happy. With the same half bottle of water, people who are easy to be happy with biochemical mechanism will be satisfied with the existing half bottle of water, while those who are unhappy with biochemical mechanism will only sigh that there is only half bottle of water.
Happiness is essentially a physiological problem. According to modern biological research, happiness is due to the secretion of certain hormones, such as serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. It's easier to be happy, that is, let your body secrete these hormones. The results show that exercise can make people secrete dopamine, and enjoying protein-rich food and regular work and rest can help to secrete serotonin. Therefore, people usually feel better after exercising, enjoying food or getting enough sleep. So, when you are in a bad mood, you can do something that can make your body produce happy hormones.
Humans rely on imagination to become the overlord of the earth and establish the reality of imagination. Human happiness still needs to be obtained from the "spiritual world" rather than outside the spirit. Happiness comes from the heart. Money, social status, plastic surgery, luxury houses and powerful positions will not bring you happiness. Long-term happiness can only be achieved through serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.
"A Brief History of Mankind" is a grand masterpiece, and the contents mentioned in it are very rich. I will only share some ideas that I think are novel. If you are interested, you can look at the original, and you will definitely get something.