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Author: Ian Tattersall Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1643131109 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
What happens now that human population has outpaced biological natural selection? Two leading scientists reveal how we became who we are—and what we might become. When we think of evolution, the image that likely comes to mind is the iconic, straight-forward image of a primate morphing into a human being. Yet random events have played huge roles in determining the evolutionary histories of everything from lobsters to humans. However, random genetic novelties are most likely to "stick" in small populations. It is mathematically unlikely to happen in large ones. With our enormous and seemingly inexorably expanding population, humanity has fallen under the influence of the famous (or infamous) “bell curve.” This revelatory new book explores what the future of our species could hold, while simultaneously revealing what we didn’t become—and what we won’t become. A cognitively unique species, our actions fall on a bell curve as well. Individuals may be saintly or evil, narrow-minded or visionary. But it is possible not just for the species, but for a person to be all of these things—even in a single day. We all fall somewhere within the giant hyperspace of the human condition that these curves describe. The Accidental Homo Sapiens shows readers that though humanity now exists on this bell curve, we are far from a stagnant species. Tattersall and DeSalle reveal how biological evolution in modern humans has given way to a cultural dynamic that is unlike anything else the Earth has ever witnessed, and that will keep life interesting—perhaps sometimes too interesting—for as long as we exist on this planet.
Author: Ian Tattersall Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1643131109 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 246
Book Description
What happens now that human population has outpaced biological natural selection? Two leading scientists reveal how we became who we are—and what we might become. When we think of evolution, the image that likely comes to mind is the iconic, straight-forward image of a primate morphing into a human being. Yet random events have played huge roles in determining the evolutionary histories of everything from lobsters to humans. However, random genetic novelties are most likely to "stick" in small populations. It is mathematically unlikely to happen in large ones. With our enormous and seemingly inexorably expanding population, humanity has fallen under the influence of the famous (or infamous) “bell curve.” This revelatory new book explores what the future of our species could hold, while simultaneously revealing what we didn’t become—and what we won’t become. A cognitively unique species, our actions fall on a bell curve as well. Individuals may be saintly or evil, narrow-minded or visionary. But it is possible not just for the species, but for a person to be all of these things—even in a single day. We all fall somewhere within the giant hyperspace of the human condition that these curves describe. The Accidental Homo Sapiens shows readers that though humanity now exists on this bell curve, we are far from a stagnant species. Tattersall and DeSalle reveal how biological evolution in modern humans has given way to a cultural dynamic that is unlike anything else the Earth has ever witnessed, and that will keep life interesting—perhaps sometimes too interesting—for as long as we exist on this planet.
Author: I Michael Grossman Publisher: ISBN: 9781953080370 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The last man standing? Earth is in crisis. And the intergalactic managers who oversee all creatures of the Milky Way Galaxy are tasked to bottom-line man's usefulness. Should they let homo sapiens survive or watch them continue to their own destruction? To answer that, the extraterrestrials charged with evaluating us as a species discover incredible truths about who we are - the good, the bad, the really, really bizarre. They look at how we govern and decide to change the rules. The Accidental President takes a deep dive into our politics and human nature based on hard-to-believe but historically accurate facts. Take a fresh look at the two-legged creatures who dominate the third planet from the Sun, and follow the extraterrestrials as they tally our vices and virtues to reach a final judgment. Or do they? The Accidental President, I. Michael Grossman's seventh book, is raw satire. You may laugh, even cheer at his take on humanity, or consider him outrageous. But you'll find yourself rolling your eyes about curious creatures known as humankind.
Author: Henry Gee Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022604498X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 218
Book Description
“With a delightfully irascible sense of humor, Henry Gee reflects on our origin . . . an excellent primer on how—and how not—to think about human evolution.” —Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe. Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, then moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee’s expertise and experience with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution. The key is not what’s missing—but how we’re linked.
Author: Yuval Noah Harari Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0062316109 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 402
Book Description
New York Times Bestseller A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.
Author: Ian Tattersall Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 023010875X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
An award-winning Museum of Natural History curator and author of Becoming Human traces the evolution of homo sapiens to demonstrate how they prevailed among other early humans because of their unique cognitive ability, in an account that also explains how their superior mental abilities were acquired. 40,000 first printing.
Author: Silvana Condemi Publisher: The Experiment, LLC ISBN: 1615196056 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 156
Book Description
Why aren’t we more like other apes? How did we win the evolutionary race? Find out how “wise” Homo sapiens really are. Prehistory has never been more exciting: New discoveries are overturning long-held theories left and right. Stone tools in Australia date back 65,000 years—a time when, we once thought, the first Sapiens had barely left Africa. DNA sequencing has unearthed a new hominid group—the Denisovans—and confirmed that crossbreeding with them (and Neanderthals) made Homo sapiens who we are today. A Pocket History of Human Evolution brings us up-to-date on the exploits of all our ancient relatives. Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier consider what accelerated our evolution: Was it tools, our “large” brains, language, empathy, or something else entirely? And why are we the sole survivors among many early bipedal humans? Their conclusions reveal the various ways ancient humans live on today—from gossip as modern “grooming” to our gendered division of labor—and what the future might hold for our strange and unique species.
Author: Ian Tattersall Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 1137000384 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
50,000 years ago – merely a blip in evolutionary time – our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their own precursors had been doing for millions of years. Yet something about our species separated it from the pack, and led to its survival while the rest became extinct. So just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become Masters of the Planet? Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tattersall takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long term evolutionary refinement. Instead it emerged quickly, shocking their world and changing it forever.
Author: Wallace Shaunfield Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN: 9781512110913 Category : Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
The research and writing of the book, HUMANS, has been a time of discovery and revelation. The intention was to complete the fascinating story touched on in the author's first two books of how early Homo sapiens became modern humans. Humans today are anatomically the same as the early Homo sapiens who first appeared on Earth about 200,000 years ago; however, there is a difference. The evidence shows they were instinctively-driven creatures much like their Homo ancestors. The hypothesis was that the key difference was modern humans have the unique attribute of consciousness. This study confirmed that and discovered how and when the transition to modern humans was made. But, much more was uncovered, including the story of how Homo sapiens acquired the broad set of key attributes that makes humans unique, compared to all other living creatures. In addition to consciousness, other attributes were discovered, including how and when the Moral Code, our conscience, our sense of a god, plus many other attributes came into being. The study was scientific in nature using secular evidence, solid logic and reason to tell the story; however, it was clearly shown that the appearance of Homo sapiens on Earth was a supernatural event, which I deduced was an act of God, just as described in the Bible. Topics, like the origination of the moral code, have been debated by scholars throughout the ages with no conclusion. Now, with secular facts, solid logic, and reason, it is also shown that the acquisition of the moral code was a supernatural act of God. The realization of a novel logic principal, I call Non-Evolving Attributes (NEA), allowed this to be determined with a high degree of confidence. Simply stated, the NEA principal says that if you have a group of descendants from a common ancestor, randomly evolved through many different branches, isolated in time and/or distance, and that all descendants have an identical attribute, then that attribute could not have randomly evolved; because if it did, then it would have had to evolve in the same way in each branch, and that is essentially impossible. If that attribute did not evolve, then the original ancestor must have that same attribute. This is profound and very powerful. If you discover a group of identical attributes in a group of people isolated from each other, but with a common ancestor, then you know right away the ancestor had that same attribute. This same principal also showed the Origin-of-Life was a supernatural act of God. No evolution was involved. This important question has long been pondered with no answer until now. This study is a breakthrough in understanding how we humans came into being. This is an important subject and one that has been debated by scholars for ages and now we have an answer. These are profound answers to long held questions, and which could cause a great deal of controversy
Author: Madelaine Böhme Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd ISBN: 1771647523 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
"Splendid and important... Scientifically rigorous and written with a clarity and candor that create a gripping tale... [Böhme's] account of the history of Europe's lost apes is imbued with the sweat, grime, and triumph that is the lot of the fieldworker, and carries great authority." —Tim Flannery, The New York Review of Books In this "fascinating forensic inquiry into human origins" (Kirkus STARRED Review), a renowned paleontologist takes readers behind-the-scenes of one of the most groundbreaking archaeological digs in recent history. Somewhere west of Munich, paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her colleagues dig for clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond anything they ever imagined: the twelve-million-year-old bones of Danuvius guggenmosi make headlines around the world. This ancient ape defies prevailing theories of human history—his skeletal adaptations suggest a new common ancestor between apes and humans, one that dwelled in Europe, not Africa. Might the great apes that traveled from Africa to Europe before Danuvius's time be the key to understanding our own origins? All this and more is explored in Ancient Bones. Using her expertise as a paleoclimatologist and paleontologist, Böhme pieces together an awe-inspiring picture of great apes that crossed land bridges from Africa to Europe millions of years ago, evolving in response to the challenging conditions they found. She also takes us behind the scenes of her research, introducing us to former theories of human evolution (complete with helpful maps and diagrams), and walks us through musty museum overflow storage where she finds forgotten fossils with yellowed labels, before taking us along to the momentous dig where she and the team unearthed Danuvius guggenmosi himself—and the incredible reverberations his discovery caused around the world. Praise for Ancient Bones: "Readable and thought-provoking. Madelaine Böhme is an iconoclast whose fossil discoveries have challenged long-standing ideas on the origins of the ancestors of apes and humans." —Steve Brusatte, New York Times-bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs "An inherently fascinating, impressively informative, and exceptionally thought-provoking read." —Midwest Book Review "An impressive introduction to the burgeoning recalibration of paleoanthropology." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Author: Ian Tattersall
Author: Ian Tattersall
Author: I Michael Grossman
Author: Henry Gee
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Author: Ian Tattersall
Author: Stanisław Przybyszewski
Author: Silvana Condemi
Author: Ian Tattersall
Author: Wallace Shaunfield
Author: Madelaine Böhme