Thanks, @littlestymar. To me, Harari's take seems more neutral than "romanticized". I share his skepticism of those who claim concrete knowledge of aspects of pre-literate human culture at which, logically, one can only guess or imagine. This might counter your point about his relative expertise / authority for that time period.

That said, I'm no historian, just a layperson who found Harari's work (so far -- I haven't yet finished "Sapiens") thought-provoking and interesting. In the relevant early chapters his perspective is refreshingly different from the norm -- in some ways comparable (for me) to Zinn's "A People's History of the US", in that it provides a PoV sufficiently removed from the standard narrative to serve as a reminder of how shallow and incomplete any one-sided version of events must be. The GP's citing of Pinker likely belongs in this camp, too: referencing an author whose ideas have merit (eg Pinker's computational theory in "How the Mind Works"), independent of their ultimate status as authoritative works.