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Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins

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Fifty thousand years ago—merely a blip in evolutionary time—our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet?

Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, 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, the final result emerged quickly, shocking our world and changing it forever.

ISBN-13: 9781137278302

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Publication Date: 05-28-2013

Pages: 288

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

Series: MacSci

Ian Tattersall, PhD, is a curator in the Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where he co-curates the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins. He is the acknowledged leader of the human fossil record, and has won several awards, including the Institute of Human Origins Lifetime Achievement Award. Tattersall has appeared on Charlie Rose and NPR's Science Friday, and has written for Scientific American and Archaeology. He's been widely cited by the media, including The New York Times, BBC, MSNBC, and National Geographic. Tattersall is the author of Becoming Human, among others. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Prologue ix

Major Events in Human Evolution xxi

1 Ancient Origins 1

2 The Rise of The Bipedal Apes 25

3 Early Hominid Lifestyles and the Interior World 45

4 Australopith Variety 69

5 Striding Out 81

6 Life on the Savanna 105

7 Out of Africa ... and Back 119

8 The First Cosmopolitan Hominid 135

9 Ice Ages and Early Europeans 145

10 Who were The Neanderthals? 159

11 Archaic and Modern 179

12 Enigmatic Arrival 185

13 The Origin of Symbolic Behavior 199

14 In the Beginning was the Word 207

Coda 227

Acknowledgments 233

Notes and Bibliography 235

Index 257