P204 Week 2 “Sapiens” Chapter 1-4 PDF

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P204 Week 2 “Sapiens” Chapter 1-4 Chapters 1-2 Summary ● Very quick summary. ● 1. Author spends a lot of time talking about the origins of humans

(Homo sapiens) and how they spread across the world and how they originated and what their related species were and how they were different and stuff. So apparently Homo sapiens just rampaged across the continent of Asia and wiped out other related species because they were more coordinated lol okay. ● 2. The author spends some time talking about “myths” and the “legal fiction,” i.e. stuff that only exists because we say it exists, and doesnʼt physically exist in the world. The author gives the example of Peugeot SA, a limited liability company, as an example of how something can exist because we say it exists, yet can immediately stop existing when we say it doesnʼt. And this “myth” of the corporation has clear impacts on society and is basically treated as an individual, yet it still doesnʼt physically exist. The “myth” of religion or democracy motivates people to do things that really arenʼt in their natural best interest. ○ All this was to say that Homo sapiens was great at communicating and unifying the masses through myths and ideas and values and other non-physical things. The author says this is why humans took over the world, and that this is what separates people from animals.

Chapter 3 Summary ● TBH this chapter was full of BS and I donʼt believe much of it. But

basically the author is discussing the lifestyle of early huntergatherer societies. While he couldʼve just taken a factual approach and told us the basic information that we know, the dude is all like “OMG hunter gatherer societies were AMAZING” and he just goes on an almost entirely speculative rant about how happy and peaceful and civilized these hunter-gatherers were and how they lived wayyyyy better than we to today and how they didnʼt get sick as often, ate better food, had longer lifespans, all that shit.

● Heʼs like describing how their communities were like, how they got

food, how they organized, etc etc but mostly heʼs just telling imagined stories with no backing. ● He also makes the point that we donʼt know shit about how their political institutions were like (thatʼs the only piece of information relevant to this class that I could pick out from the reading).

Chapter 4 Summary ● Here the author is talking about the time when humans started

sailing and exploring (apparently some 45K years ago) and made it to Australia, where they apparently wiped out a bunch of species. Author says there is evidence that humans arrived and just killed everything because the animals there hadnʼt evolved a fear of humans…….. ● On there hand hand, the author talks about how humans crossed the Bering straight from Russia and began migrating to North America. A few thousand years later, and humans had spread all the way across the entire Western Hemisphere (North and South America). Author says that people like to blame climate change for why a bunch of species died, but says that humans are the most likely cause of those extinctions. ● Author says there were three Waves of Extinctions: (1) From migrating foragers, (2) From development of agriculture, and (3) the current Industrial Age....