Erich Maria Remarque
Triumphal Arch
© The Estate of the Late Paulette Remarque, 1945
© Translation. M. L. Rudnitsky, 2014
© Russian edition AST Publishers, 2017
A woman appeared from somewhere to the side and walked straight towards Ravich. She walked quickly, but with an uncertain, shaky step. Ravich noticed her when she was almost level with him. Pale face, high cheekbones, wide-eyed eyes. A frozen, upturned face-mask, and in the eyes, like the dim reflection of a lantern, an expression of such glassy emptiness flashed that Ravich involuntarily became wary.
The woman passed very close, almost hitting Ravich. He sharply extended his hand and grabbed the stranger by the elbow. She staggered and would have inevitably fallen if he had not supported her. But he held on tight.
-Where are you going? – he asked, hesitating a little.
The woman looked at him point blank.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
Ravich did not answer. And he continued to hold the stranger tightly.
- Let me go! What does it mean? “She barely moved her lips.
It seemed to Ravich that she did not see him at all. The woman looked somewhere past and through him, her eyes fixed on the impenetrable darkness of the night. He was just an obstacle in her way, and that was exactly how she addressed him.
- Let me in!
He immediately determined: no, not a whore. And not drunk. He loosened his grip slightly. Now the woman could easily free herself if she wanted, but she didn’t even notice it. Ravich was still waiting.
- No, no joke, where are you going in the middle of the night, alone, at this time, in Paris? – he repeated his question as calmly as possible, finally releasing her hand.
The stranger was silent. But she didn’t leave either. It seemed that now that she was stopped, she was no longer able to take a single step.
Ravich leaned against the parapet of the bridge, feeling the damp, porous stone under his palms.
- Isn’t that right? “He nodded behind him, where, glistening with viscous lead, the unstoppable Seine was squeezing lazily and heavily under the shadow of the Alm Bridge.
The woman did not answer.
“It’s still too early,” said Ravich. - It’s a little early, and it’s cold. November after all.
He took out cigarettes and rummaged in his pocket, feeling for matches. Finally he found it, realized by touch that there were only two matches left in the cardboard box, and he habitually hunched over, covering the flame in his palms - there was a light breeze from the river.
“Give me a cigarette too,” the stranger said in an even, expressionless voice.
Ravich raised his head, then showed her the pack.
- Algerian. Black tobacco. Smoke of the Foreign Legion. They'll probably be a little too strong for you. I don't have any others.
The woman shook her head and took a cigarette. Ravich handed her a burning match. She smoked greedily, taking deep puffs. Ravich threw the match over the parapet. The match cut through the darkness like a bright shooting star and, touching the water, went out.
A taxi crawled across the bridge at low speed. The driver slowed down. He looked at them, waited a little, then sharply accelerated and drove on along the wet, shiny, black pavement of George the Fifth Avenue.
Ravich suddenly felt that he was tired to death. I worked like hell all day, and then I couldn’t sleep. That’s why I went out – I wanted something to drink. But now, in the chilly darkness of the night, fatigue suddenly came upon him - as if a bag had been thrown over his head.
He looked at the stranger. Why the hell did he stop her? Clearly, something happened to her. But what does it matter to him? He never saw many women with whom something had happened, and even more so in the middle of the night in Paris, and now he didn’t care about all this, he only wanted one thing - to sleep for a couple of hours.
“You should go home,” he said. - At a time like this - what did you lose on the street? You won't find anything good here except trouble.
And he raised his collar, firmly intending to leave.
The woman looked at him with an uncomprehending look.
- Home? – she asked again.
Ravich shrugged:
- Well, yes, home, to your apartment or to a hotel, wherever. You don't want to spend the night at the police station, do you?
- To the hotel! Oh my God! – the woman muttered.
Ravich turned around. Another restless soul with nowhere to go, he thought. It's time to get used to it. Always the same. At night they don’t know where to go, and the next morning, before you can open your eyes, there’s already no trace of them. In the morning, they know perfectly well where they need to go and what’s what. Old as the world, ordinary night despair - rolls along with the darkness and disappears with it. He threw away the cigarette butt. As if he himself hadn’t had enough of it all.
“Let’s go have a drink somewhere,” he suggested.
This is the simplest thing. He will pay and leave, and then let her decide what to do and what to do.
The woman moved forward hesitantly, but stumbled and staggered. Ravich grabbed her arm.
- Are you tired? - he asked.
- Don't know. Perhaps.
– Are you so tired that you can’t sleep?
She nodded.
- Happens. Let's go. Hold on to me.
They walked along Avenue Marceau. Ravich felt that the stranger was leaning on him as if she was about to fall.
They turned onto Peter Serbsky Avenue. Beyond the intersection with Rue Chaillot, in a receding perspective between the houses, the outlines of the Arc de Triomphe rose up like a dark and unsteady mass against the background of the rainy sky.
Ravich nodded towards the sign that glowed above the narrow basement stairs:
“We’ll come here, there’s sure to be something here.”
It was a driver's pub. There are several taxi drivers and a couple of whores at the tables. Taxi drivers played cards. The whores sipped absinthe. As if on cue, they measured his companion with a quick, professional gaze. After which they turned away indifferently. The older one yawned loudly; the other began lazily putting on her makeup. In the back, a very young waiter with the face of an offended little rat poured sawdust onto the stone slabs and began sweeping the floor. Ravich chose a table near the door. This will make it easier to wash away. I didn’t take off my coat.
- What will you drink? - he asked.
- Don't know. Anything.
“Two Calvados,” he said to the approaching waiter; he was wearing a vest, his shirt sleeves rolled up. - And a pack of Chesterfields.
“There’s no Chesterfield,” the waiter snapped. - Only French.
- Fine. Then a pack of Laurent, green.
- There are no green ones. Only blue ones.
Ravich looked at the waiter’s hand, there was a tattoo on it - a naked beauty walking on the clouds. The waiter caught his gaze and, clenching his hand into a fist, played with the muscle. The beauty's belly moved lustfully.
“Then blue ones,” said Ravich.
Garson grinned.
“Maybe there will still be green ones,” he reassured and walked away, shuffling in his slippers.
Ravich looked after him.
“Red flip-flops, belly dancing tattoo,” he muttered. - The guy served in the Turkish Navy.
The stranger put her hands on the table. She laid them down as if she would never pick them up again. The hands were well-groomed, but that doesn’t mean anything. And not so well-groomed. There's the nail on the middle finger right hand broken off and seemingly just bitten off. And the varnish has peeled off in some places.
The waiter brought two glasses and a pack of cigarettes.
– “Laurent”, green. One pack was found.
– I didn’t doubt you. Did you serve in the navy?
- No. At the circus.
- And even better. – Ravich pushed a glass towards the woman. - Here, have a drink. At such times - the most suitable drink. Or do you want coffee?
- Just in one gulp.
The woman nodded and downed her glass. Ravich looked at her closely. The face is extinct, deathly pale, almost without expression. The lips are swollen, but also faded, as if their outlines have been erased, and only light brown hair, heavy, with a natural golden tint, is truly beautiful. She wore a beret and a blue tailored suit underneath her cloak. The suit is from an expensive tailor, and only the green stone in the ring on his hand is too large to be real.
-Will you have another drink? – asked Ravich.
The stranger nodded.
He called the waiter.
- Two more Calvados. Just more glasses.
- Just glasses? Or should I pour more?
- Exactly.
- So, two doubles?
- You are quick-witted.
Ravich decided to drink his Calvados right away and run away. It was getting boring, and he was tired to death. In fact, he was patient in such cases, after all, he had forty years of a far from calm life behind him. However, everything that was happening now was too familiar to him. He has been in Paris for several years, he has insomnia, and, wandering around the city at night, he has seen everything.
Garson brought the order. Ravich carefully accepted the glasses of spicy, fragrant apple vodka and placed one in front of the stranger.
- Here, have another drink. It won't help, but it will definitely warm you up. And no matter what happens to you, don’t worry. There aren't many things in the world worth worrying about.
The woman looked up at him. But I didn’t drink.
“It’s true,” Ravich continued. - Especially at night. Night – she exaggerates everything.
The woman was still looking at him.
“You don’t need to console me,” she said.
- All the better.
Ravich was already looking for the waiter. He's had enough. He knows this type of women. She must be Russian, he thought. This one won’t even have time to warm up and dry out, and it will already begin to teach you wisdom.
Title: Arc de Triomphe
Writer: Erich Maria Remarque
Year: 1945
Publisher: AST
Age limit: 12+
Volume: 540 pages.
Genres: 20th century literature, Classical prose, Foreign classics
About the book “Arc de Triomphe” by Erich Maria Remarque
Without grief and troubles, a person will never be able to appreciate quiet, calm happiness. Only in difficult circumstances of life does his soul grow. In dark times, bright people are always visible. They do not break even under strong blows of fate. Their character does not change from the wind of change, even if it is change in the worst side. “In an empty night of loneliness, that’s when something of one’s own can grow in a person, unless he falls into despair...” - these words are spoken by main character a love and dramatic story that began not far from the triumphal arch in the most romantic city in the world - Paris.
But in Remarque’s novel we see a completely different France: a half-lit, dark capital, a gloomy sky overhead with gray, frowning clouds, from which a slanting, incessant rain pours onto the ground. Nature seems to emphasize everything that happens in the souls of the people living here: hopelessness in the air, broken hopes, poverty, misery and the feeling of imminent disaster. This is the agony, the decline of Europe, soon the Nazis will come to power and will carve out this part of the world according to their own wishes, regardless of anyone’s interests. In such a gloomy atmosphere there is no place for light; dreams do not come true here. People here do not exist, but survive.
This is where the main character of this story lives, Ravik, a surgeon, an emigrant without any documents, who fled his country. He visited the Gestapo, endured torture and saw how a person dear to him died from the clutches of the Nazis. Living in constant fear of arrest, deportation from France, tormented by difficult memories of the past, nevertheless, this man is really engaged in necessary thing- saves human lives. Cheap hotel, working without a license for pennies, without documents, drinking in the evenings... this is exactly the existence given to the main character. How to evaluate his meeting with Joan - each reader must decide for himself... Maybe this woman was sent to him as another punishment, punishment, she caused him so much pain with her windy antics... On the other hand, maybe she is the only bright spot in his life, full of hardships and hardships, because no one said that love should be easy... Sometimes this feeling turns our soul inside out. Researchers of Remarque's work say that this novel is partly autobiographical: the prototype of Joan Madu was the famous actress Marlene Dietrich, with whom the writer had a fairly close relationship, the author was also an emigrant who lived far from his homeland, anticipated the onset of the Second World War, knew how the most dangerous threat should be expected...
Mysterious Parisian nights, ancient gypsy romances, cigarette smoke and booze, passion without limit... all this slightly dilutes the life of the main character. But he still walks along it, like at the end of a rope. After all, you never know what awaits you at the next turn of fate. Maybe the end of this story is peace for the main character. He will no longer fight for his existence, now he absolutely doesn’t care what happens to him next... Now this man will only have memories of the past, and who knows how long he will be allowed to indulge in them...
On our literary website you can download the book “The Arc de Triomphe” by Erich Maria Remarque for free in suitable formats different devices formats - epub, fb2, txt, rtf. Do you like to read books and always keep up with new releases? We have big choice books of various genres: classics, modern fiction, literature on psychology and children's publications. In addition, we offer interesting and educational articles for aspiring writers and all those who want to learn how to write beautifully. Each of our visitors will be able to find something useful and exciting for themselves.
Current page: 1 (book has 35 pages total) [available reading passage: 23 pages]
Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity
In memory of my father Shlomo Harari
Yuval Noah Harari
A Brief History of Humankind
Copyright © Yuval Noah Harari 2011
This edition is published by arrangement with
The Deborah Harris Agency and Synopsis Literary Agency.
Transfer from English Love Amount
Part one
Cognitive revolution
The rock paintings in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in the south of France are about 30 thousand years old. These works of art were created by people who looked, thought and spoke like us
Chapter 1
An inconspicuous animal
About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space appeared: the Big Bang occurred. Physics deals with the history of these fundamental phenomena of the Universe.
After 300 thousand years from the beginning of their existence, matter and energy began to form complex complexes with each other - atoms, and they began to be combined into molecules. Chemistry deals with the history of atoms, molecules and their interactions.
Approximately 3.8 billion years ago on planet Earth, certain molecules combined into large and complex structures - organisms. Biology studies the history of organic life.
About 70 thousand years ago, organisms belonging to the species Homo sapiens , gave birth to something even more sophisticated - we call it culture. And the science of history itself is interested in the further fate of human cultures.
The course of human history was determined by three major revolutions. It began with the cognitive revolution, 70 thousand years ago. The agricultural revolution that occurred 12 thousand years ago significantly accelerated progress. The scientific revolution - it is only 500 years old - is quite capable of ending history and laying the foundation for something different, unprecedented. This book tells how the three revolutions affected people and other living beings - the faithful companions of people.
* * *
People existed long before the beginning of history. Animals very similar to modern humans first appeared 2.5 million years ago, but for countless generations they did not stand out among the billions of other creatures with which they shared their habitats.
On a walk through East Africa a couple of million years ago, you might have come across a very familiar scene: tender mothers clutching their babies to their breasts, carefree children playing in the mud, ardent youth outraged by the dictates of convention, and tired old people asking to be left alone; machos beat themselves in the chest with their fists, trying to impress the local beauty, wise matriarchs look at what is happening and know that they have already seen all this more than once. Those ancient people knew how to play and love, strong relationships developed between them, they fought for power and status - but chimpanzees, baboons, and elephants behaved the same way. People were no different from animals. No one, and first of all the people themselves, could have predicted that their descendants would walk on the Moon, split the atom, solve genetic code and create chronicles. This must be remembered when we discuss prehistoric man: he was the most common animal and influenced ecological environment no more influential than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish.
Biologists classify organisms into genera and species. Animals of the same species can copulate with each other, producing fertile offspring. Horses and donkeys share a close common ancestor and many common traits, but they show little or no mutual sexual interest. They can be forced to have sexual intercourse, and as a result, offspring will appear - mules, but the offspring will be infertile. This means that horses and donkeys belong to different species. In contrast, a bulldog and a spaniel may not look alike, but they mate willingly, and their offspring will be able to breed with other dogs and produce the next generation of puppies. Bulldogs and spaniels therefore belong to the same species - they are dogs.
Species descended from a common ancestor are grouped into a genus (genus). Lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars - different types sort of Panthera. Biologists give double Latin names to living organisms, the first name denoting the genus, the second denoting the species. For example, lions - Panthera leo, that is, the view leo sort of Panthera. In all likelihood, any reader of this book - Homo sapiens, that is, belongs to the species sapiens(reasonable) kind Homo(Human).
Genera, in turn, are united into families - for example: felines (lions, cheetahs, domestic cats), canines (wolves, foxes, jackals) or elephants (elephants, mammoths, mastodons). All members of the family can trace their ancestry back to a certain ancestor. Thus, all cats, from the tiny house kitten to the ferocious lion, can be traced back to a single ancestor who lived approximately 25 million years ago.
AND Homo sapiens also belongs to a special family, although for a long time and stubbornly he kept this fact in the strictest confidence. Homo sapiens he preferred to imagine himself as the only one of his kind, separated from other animals - an orphan, without sisters and brothers, without step- or cousins, and most importantly, without parents. But this is a misconception. Like it or not, we are members of a large, noisy family of great apes (great apes). Among our living living relatives are chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons, of which chimpanzees are closest to us. Just 6 million years ago, an ape gave birth to two daughters. One became the ancestor of all living chimpanzees, the second is great-great-great, and so on, our grandmother.
Skeletons in the closetHomo sapiens hides a darker secret: not only do we have many wild relatives, but we once had siblings. We have given ourselves the name “man,” but at one time the genus “man” included several species. People are animals of the kind Homo– appeared in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago as a branch of an older genus of monkeys Australopithecus, that is, “southern monkeys”. And two million years ago, some ancient men and women left their homeland and went to wander across vast spaces North Africa, Europe and Asia, where they settled. Because survival in the snowy forests of northern Europe required different qualities than survival in the steamy jungles of Indonesia, human populations evolved in different directions, resulting in different species, each of which scientists gave a pompous Latin name.
Has gained a foothold in Europe and Western Asia Homo neanderthalensis(Neander Valley Man), commonly referred to simply as "Neanderthal". Neanderthals, thicker and more muscular than modern humans, successfully adapted to the cold climate of Ice Age Europe. Lived on the island of Java Homo soloensis(a man from the Solo Valley), more adapted to life in the tropics. Another Indonesian island, the small island of Flores, is home to creatures that the popular press now tends to compare to hobbits. These dwarfs armed with spears, no more than a meter tall, weighed an average of 25 kilograms, but you cannot deny their courage. They even hunted local elephants - however, even the elephants here were dwarf. Explored the open spaces of Asia Homo erectus(Homo erectus), and this most enduring human species has survived there for over 1.5 million years.
In 2010, another lost brother returned from the depths of oblivion: during excavations of the Denisova Cave in Siberia, a petrified phalanx of a finger was discovered. Genetic analysis proved that the finger belongs to a previously unknown human species, which was named accordingly Denisovan man, Homo denisova. Who knows how many more forgotten relatives are waiting to be discovered - in other caves, on islands, in other climatic zones!
While these species of humans were evolving in Europe and Asia, evolution continued in East Africa. The Cradle of Humankind nurtured more and more new species, including Homo rudolfensis(Lake Rudolph Man) Homo ergaster(working person) and ultimately our own species, which we, without false modesty, dubbed Homo sapiens(reasonable person).
Some species of people turned out to be large, others were dwarfs. Among them were fearless hunters and timid gatherers plant food. Some lived exclusively within one island, while others explored entire continents. But these were all representatives of the clan Homo, in other words – humanity.
There is a popular misconception that all these species replaced each other as successors: Ergaster gives rise to erectus, erectus gives rise to Neanderthal, and you and I descend from Neanderthal. Linear model creates the false impression that only one human species lived on Earth at any given time and that all ancient species are outdated models of modern humans.
Our closest relatives (modern estimated reconstruction, from left to right): Homo rudolfensis (East Africa, 2 million years ago); Homo erectus (Asia, 2 million - 50 thousand years ago) and Homo neanderthalensis (Europe and Western Asia, 400 - 30 thousand years ago). These are all human beings
In fact, almost two million years - approximately until the 8th millennium BC. e. – several human species existed at the same time. Actually, why not? Many species of foxes, bears and pigs live now. A hundred thousand years ago, at least six species of humans walked the Earth. The exception to the rule (the exception that casts an ominous shadow of suspicion on us) is precisely the current exclusivity, and not the varied past. We will soon be convinced that Homo sapiens there are reasons to suppress any memory of extinct brethren.
The price of reasonFor all their differences, the varieties of humanity have distinct common features. First of all, humans have disproportionately large brains compared to other animals. Mammals weighing 60 kilograms have an average brain volume of 200 cubic centimeters, but a sixty-kilogram Homo sapiens“grew” himself a brain with a volume of 1200–1400 cubic centimeters. 2.5 million years ago, the first men and women had smaller brains, but still significantly larger than, say, a leopard of the same weight. And as humanity developed, the disproportion increased.
It seems to us that it is hardly worth racking our brains over the question of why evolution encouraged this very brain. We are delighted with our intelligence and are convinced that the bigger and smarter the head, the better. But if this were an absolute truth, cats would also produce offspring capable of doing mathematical analysis. Why is there only one genus out of the entire animal kingdom? Homo acquired such a massive and complex thinking apparatus?
In fact, the larger the brain, the greater the cost to the entire body. Carrying it around with you everywhere is not easy, especially with a massive skull. It is even more difficult to feed this brain. U Homo sapiens 2–3% total weight occurs in the brain, but at rest the brain consumes up to 25% of all energy consumed by the body. For comparison: in other primates, the brain at rest is content with only 8% of its total reserves. Ancient people paid dearly for an enlarged brain: firstly, they spent more time searching for food, and secondly, their muscles weakened. Like a government directing money toward education rather than the military, people were taking energy from their biceps and giving it to their neurons, which is not best strategy for survival in the savannah. A chimpanzee will not win a scientific argument with a person, but he can easily tear him apart.
But still, in some way it was beneficial, otherwise the brainy ones would not have given birth to even more brainy offspring. How did the brain compensate for the decrease in physical power? In the age of Albert Einstein, such a question may seem naive, but Einstein is a phenomenon of the modern era, and for two million years, while the neural networks in the human head grew and became more complex, people could only boast of flint knives and sharpened sticks. The evolution of the human brain is a mystery even more amazing than the appearance of the useless peacock's tail or the antlers that burden the head of a deer. What is all this for? The truth is, we don't know.
Another unique human trait is walking upright. Rising from all fours, it is more convenient to survey the savannah, looking out for prey or an enemy. With hands that are not involved in movement, you can do various things, for example, throw stones or give signals to relatives. The more functions the hands are used to performing, the more favorable the life of the owner of these hands was, and therefore evolution encouraged the appearance of more and more nerves and sensitive muscles in the palms and fingers. As a result, man learned to do the most complex things with his hands, and most importantly, to create sophisticated tools and use them. The first evidence of tool use appears 2.5 million years ago. It is the production and use of tools that are considered the defining feature by which archaeologists identify ancient people.
Upright walking, in addition to its advantages, also has disadvantages. The skeleton of our primate ancestors evolved over millions of years to accommodate a creature that ran on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adapting to upright walking was not so easy, and even on top of this entire structure it was necessary to hold a disproportionately large skull. To this day, humanity still pays for the ability to see into the distance and for skillful hands with neck pain and migraines.
The women paid double. Walking upright narrowed the hips, and therefore the birth canal, while babies' heads grew larger. Death in childbirth has become the main danger for females of our species. Women who gave birth to babies prematurely, while the skull was still relatively small and soft, had a better chance of survival and gave birth to more children. Thus, natural selection began to favor premature birth. Compared to other animals, human babies are born “half-baked”: many important systems they have not yet developed. Soon after birth, a foal is ready to trot, a one-month-old kitten can part with its mother and get its own food, and a human child remains helpless for many years, dependent on its elders, who feed, protect and teach it.
This circumstance led to the development of extraordinary social properties in humans - and to the emergence of equally unique social problems. A single mother is unable to feed herself and her offspring if she also has to babysit helpless babies. In raising children, significant help from relatives and neighbors was required. Only a tribe or community can raise a person. Evolution favored those who learned to form strong social connections. In addition, because human babies are born underdeveloped, they are much more amenable to education and socialization than other animals. Mammals, for the most part, emerge from the womb ready-made, like a jar from a kiln: try to reshape such a vessel, and you will break or scratch it. Children come out of their mother's womb like molten glass - twist them, stretch them, shape them, do whatever you want. We can raise a child to be a Christian or a Buddhist, a supporter of capitalism or socialism, war or peace.
* * *
Large brain, ability to use tools, high learning ability and complex social structures We consider it an absolute advantage. It seems certain that it was they who turned man into the king of nature. However, man enjoyed these advantages for 2 million years, while remaining a rather weak, almost marginal creature. All the species of people who settled from Indonesia to the Iberian Peninsula did not number even a million individuals, and their life would be more accurately called vegetation. They were in constant fear of predators, they rarely managed to kill large game, they subsisted mainly on plant food, and also caught insects and small animals and gnawed on carrion left by the stronger and more agile ones.
Ancient stone tools were used primarily to break bones and get to the brain. Some scientists believe that this was the ecological niche of humans. Just as the woodpecker specializes in extracting insects from tree trunks, so ancient people specialized in extracting bone marrow. Why exactly this? Well, imagine: before your eyes, a pack of lions hunted down and devoured a giraffe. You wait patiently on the sidelines. After the lions, it’s the turn of hyenas and jackals - you can’t fight them either. They gnaw at the bones, and only then does the human tribe decide to approach the skeleton. People look around warily and take on what is left to them.
This is the key to understanding human history and psychology. Until recently, the family Homo occupied not the top, but rather the middle position in the food pyramid. For millions of years, people hunted small animals and collected whatever they could get their hands on, trying to avoid encounters with large predators. Only 400 thousand years ago people began to regularly hunt large animals, and only in the last 100 thousand years, with the advent Homo sapiens, we have become the top link of this pyramid.
The consequences of such a rapid leap from an intermediate and dependent position to the top were colossal. A person is not used to being at a commanding height; he is not adapted to it. Other animals that ended up at the top of the pyramid - lions, sharks - took millions of years to get there, but man got to the top almost instantly. Many historical catastrophes, including destructive wars and violence against the ecosystem, stem from our too hasty breakthrough into power. Humanity is not a pack of wolves that suddenly took possession of tanks and atomic bombs; rather, we are a flock of sheep that, due to an incomprehensible whim of evolution, learned to make and use tanks and missiles. And armed sheep are much more dangerous than armed wolves.
Born ChefsAn important step on the way to the top was the taming of fire. We don't know exactly where, when or how it happened. But about 300 thousand years before the present, some people were already using fire regularly. It served them as a reliable source of heat and light and protection from the lions prowling around. A little more time passed, and people switched from defense to attack, and the first mass production appeared - the deliberate burning of forests. After waiting for the fire to die down, Stone Age entrepreneurs walked through the smoking fire, collecting charred animal carcasses, nuts, and tubers. This is how man learned to develop the territory: a well-directed flame turned impassable and food-poor forests into meadows full of tempting prey. But the main thing that fire did was cook food.
Having learned to cook, a person was able to use new types of products, he began to spend less time on food, he no longer needed powerful molars and a long intestine. Some scientists see a direct connection between the development of fire, a reduction in the length of the intestines and an increase in brain size: both a long intestine and a large brain require a lot of energy, and therefore it is difficult for the body to maintain both of them. By shortening the length of the intestines and reducing energy consumption, man was able to “grow” those huge brains for which Neanderthals and Homo sapiens 1 .
The development of fire created the first gap between man and other animals. All animals depend only on their body - on the strength of their muscles, the size of their teeth, their wingspan. They skillfully use air and sea currents, but do not know how to control the forces of nature and are initially limited by the peculiarities of their physical structure. So, eagles catch warm water rising from the ground air currents, open their huge wings and allow the current to lift them up, but the eagle does not distribute the air currents in the way that is most convenient for it, and the maximum lifting force is always exactly proportional to the size of its wing.
When people mastered fire, they had a controllable and practically unlimited resource at their disposal. Unlike the eagle, man himself decides where and when to light the fire, and he has learned to use it in the most for different purposes. The most important thing: the power of fire is by no means determined by the shape, structure or power of the human body. A weak woman, having a flint and a cross or a burning stick, is capable of burning a forest in a few hours. The development of fire became a harbinger of the future: it was the first step towards the creation atomic bomb, and not such a small step.
Book:"Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity"
Original name: Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind
Out: 2016
Publisher:"Sinbad"
Language: translation from English
about the author
Yuval Noah Harari (born February 24, 1976) is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1993 to 1998 he studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, specializing in the history of the Middle Ages and the history of wars. He received his PhD in 2002 from Jesus College, Oxford. From 2003 to 2005, he conducted research with funds from the Rothschild Charitable Foundation Yad Hanadiv in Israel. Currently, Harari’s interests include world history and macro-historical processes.
About the book
“No, we didn’t domesticate wheat. She is the one who domesticated us.” Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity."
Israeli historian Yuval Harari's ambitious project to write a concise, popular and comprehensive history of all humanity has immediately drawn comparisons to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Of course, the similarity of names is provided by the author. At the beginning of the book, Harari talks about global challenges. Describe what happened to big bang before the formation of atoms and molecules - the lot of physics, after that chemistry is involved, with the appearance of the first living beings - biology, and with the advent of culture - history.
The problem is that it is impossible to write the history of humanity in the same way as to write the history of proteins, atoms or the universe - there are too few general laws, there are no equations and experiments are almost impossible. Harari reminds himself of this throughout the first third of the book. The story begins with the appearance of the Homo species on Earth - all its species, from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens. For Harari, it is very important to convey to the reader that we are not alone: the only child in the family, sapiens is actually an orphan who has lost brothers, some of whom even lived at the same time as him. But at the end of the first third of the book, Harari comes to a discussion of cultural phenomena and how they govern human life. And here there is no room for reservations: the author cannot resist striking but controversial conclusions.
What happened to sapiens from hunter-gatherer to Neil Armstrong and (Harari never forgets this) seamstress worker in a Chinese sweatshop? The author takes the reader through a series of key, in his opinion, events in history: the cultural revolution (not the one with the Red Guards, but after the invention of language), the agricultural revolution, the birth of capitalism.
The author is categorical; the habit of placing references to other people's work at the end of the book, rather than at the bottom of the page, makes it sound even harsher. The author's political beliefs (Harari is a committed socialist) and his attitude towards everything from financial instruments to liberalism shine through the text. In addition, the entire book is imbued with nostalgia for the times of gathering and hunting: short working hours, an abundant and varied diet, and property equality are much more attractive for Harari than the unevenly distributed benefits of modern civilization. You can read it with great interest, but with extreme caution: Harari goes beyond his limits dozens of times. professional competence, delves into the fields of ethology, psychology and macroeconomics.
The key problem of the book is the connection between human biology and its behavior as a species. More precisely, the absence of such a connection. If individual people, the author writes, still show their animal origins, then in groups of more than 150 people they act as completely different creatures.
Asking in the final pages about the future of humanity, Harari writes: “What could be more dangerous than disappointed, irresponsible gods who never realized what they want?” Coming with the author to the problem of life after the onset of the technological singularity, it is important for the reader to remember: this problem concerns not only Yuval Noah Harari.
About the publication
The book was published in the Big Ideas series by the Sinbad publishing house.
One hundred thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was one of at least six human species living on this planet—an unremarkable animal that played no more role in the ecosystem than gorillas, fireflies or jellyfish. But about seventy thousand years ago, a mysterious change in the cognitive abilities of Homo sapiens turned him into a master of the planet and an ecosystem nightmare. How did Homo sapiens manage to conquer the world? What happened to other human species? When and why did money, states and religion appear? How did empires rise and fall? Why did almost all societies place women lower than men? How did science and capitalism become the dominant beliefs of the modern era? Have people become happier over time? What future awaits us?
Yuval Harari shows how the course of history has shaped human society and the reality around it. His book traces the connection between the events of the past and the problems of our time and forces the reader to reconsider all established ideas about the world around him. In addition, in the “Notes” the author refers to articles, numbering more than a hundred, both special and popular science, devoted to even more specific things. Many of the facts and guesses reproduced by the author are very interesting. But let us note that the above list of subjects, although not short, is far from complete, i.e. does not include much that is no less significant. In addition, there is a spectrum of views on any issue, whether or not the author addresses it, so no one source should be relied upon.
Why is it worth reading the book?
- A digest of human existence from the beginning of time to the projected future;
- The book is undoubtedly worth giving to older schoolchildren to read in order to understand the meaning of the processes taking place in the world.;
- The book raises many questions related to ethics and encourages us to think about what we are dooming the planet to.;
- The author simply, clearly and at an acceptable speed talks about who we are, how we came to be and what we had to endure.
