A Snapshot of My Current Reading

A few weeks ago I began reading Sapiens: A Brief History after receiving it for my birthday from Grandpa Fred. This Jared Diamondesque book begins in pre-history, sweeps through the Cognitive Revolution and passes through the Agricultural Revolution before slowing down the explain the Unification of Humankind in Afro-Asia and then across the globe through money, empires, and religions. After that rapid, but lucid narrative, the author (Yuval Noah Harari) has slowed down to explain the Scientific Revolution.

Chapter 15 is titled "The Marriage of Science and Empire" and he highlights the scientific work British imperialists undertook in India. I was fascinated to learn that a British archeological team discovered Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan in 1922 after nearly three millennia, William Jones first presented the theory of the Indo-European language family, and conducted the Great Trigonometrical Survey over nearly 100 years.  All of those facts are simply amazing! Of course they don't justify the exploitation, but they are remarkable nevertheless. How exciting must it have been to undercover a lost world or decipher their writings? It's inspirational to think that one person could do so much or be part of such an herculean scientific undertaking spanning a few years short of a century.