While Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo sapiens claims that humans have achieved a superior position on Earth through fire and language, it raises the question of whether our “superiority” is an absolute concept. From an evolutionary biology perspective, humans are merely a species that shares similarities with a wide variety of life forms and coexists within an ecosystem through interactions with them. The development of language and intelligence in humans is merely a way of survival, and should be viewed with a critical eye, as it does not make us superior to other life forms.
In chapters 1 and 2 of Homo sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari argues that a variety of unique human traits have played a large role in our current position of superiority. He notes that the brain and upright walking are traits that come at a high cost, and while he downplays their contribution, he emphasizes that fire and language helped primitive humans dominate other organisms, and that the cognitive revolution was a major factor in the development of Homo sapiens into a globally influential species. However, there are some important objections to this argument. First, there’s the question of whether humanity’s current position can really be defined as “superior,” and second, there’s an overestimation of the impact that human language has had on ecosystems and humanity.
First, humanity’s current position on the planet cannot be defined as superior. Yuval Noah Harari describes humans as top predators on the food chain, which presupposes that humans are superior beings at the top of the food chain. For example, a shark in an aquarium is a top predator that can eat other fish, but we don’t see it as the most superior being in the ecosystem. This shows that being able to act as a predator in an ecosystem doesn’t necessarily correlate with superiority in the ecosystem. In a similar vein, humans are also capable of playing a predator role on Earth, but there is little evidence to suggest that they are absolutely superior to other organisms.
Yuval Noah Harari also emphasizes human superiority based on the fact that humans exert an enormous influence on all life on Earth. He describes the relationship between humans and other life forms as one-sided, interpreting the process of humans gradually domesticating and controlling animals as a selective act of humans. However, from the perspective of evolutionary anthropology, this is a rather short-sighted interpretation. According to Steven Budianski’s book, “The Wildlife Pact,” early humans and wolves coexisted during the Pleistocene pre-glacial period, feeding on the same megamammals. During this process, wolves foraged for human discarded food and stayed around human settlements, gradually forming a symbiotic relationship with humans, which led to the process of human domestication through voluntary selection. This historical example shows that humans have not unilaterally oppressed and dominated animals, but rather that animals have chosen to live in symbiosis with humans in order to survive and thrive. This historical example suggests that the influence humans exert on animals is a result of interaction, and shows that humans are not unconditionally superior.
Furthermore, the relationship between humans and microbes also provides evidence to negate the claim of human superiority. Steven Jay Gould argues that microbes, especially bacteria, have always been and will always be the most dominant life forms on Earth. Bacteria are the earliest forms of life on Earth, with between 300,000 and more than 1 million species discovered, and they coexist in the human body in a variety of ways. For example, there are about 400 species of bacteria living in our organs, with the large intestine containing anywhere from 1 to 10 trillion bacteria per milliliter. In fact, the number of bacteria in the human body is about 10 times greater than the number of cells in the body, which means that humans are not independent life forms, but rather part of an ecosystem that exists in a symbiotic relationship with microorganisms. Humans could not exist on Earth without coexisting with bacteria, and on this basis, humans are not fundamentally different or superior to other life forms.
In addition, Yuval Noah Harari emphasizes that human language is a tool that has made us superior to other animals. He characterizes human language as being flexible in its development, allowing us to convey a lot of information. However, the main factor that made this possible is the development of the human brain rather than language itself. Modern anatomical studies have shown that language is not a uniquely human tool, but rather an example of a survival adaptation strategy that humans have acquired while interacting with their environment. For example, chimpanzees, whales, birds, and other animals also have complex social relationships using different sound and signaling systems to communicate the information they need to survive. In the end, the high flexibility that characterizes human language is made possible by the development of the human brain, and language itself cannot be absolute proof of human superiority.
In conclusion, human superiority is largely an anthropocentric judgment. Biologically, humans are just one species in the phylum Chordata mammals, and we survive in an interdependent relationship with other animals. Homo sapiens is thematized around human progress and development, portraying human complexity as the result of progress, but in evolutionary biology, increasing diversity, not progress, is considered an essential feature of life. In his book Full House, Stephen Jay Gould emphasizes that the evolution of life has never been a linear process of progression, but rather an increase in the diversity of traits and adaptations of living things. In other words, the increase in human complexity is not evidence of progress, but rather the realization of one of life’s many possibilities.
From this perspective, human language, too, is an adaptive behavior driven by natural selection, not something special, but rather a way of surviving that is tailored to our species. Anatomical similarities and genetic commonalities suggest that human language is not fundamentally different from how other creatures communicate. While Yuval Noah Harari appreciates the flexibility of human language to convey more information than other animals, he attributes this to our highly developed brains rather than to the nature of language itself. Thus, it is the capacity of our developed brains, not the specificity of our language, that has changed our place in the ecosystem.
While Homo sapiens presupposes and explores the causes of human superiority, a more objective view is that humans are universal beings who share traits with a wide variety of other organisms as part of the Earth’s ecosystem. We need to move away from this self-imposed notion of superiority and instead view humanity as a member of a community with limitations, just like the rest of life on Earth.
