The Big Mysteries of Human Evolution

De: Dr. Elen Feuerriegel, The Great Courses

Narrado por: Dr. Elen Feurriegel

Who are we? Where did we come from?

These aren’t flippant questions, in the least. For millennia, poets, artists, philosophers, politicians, historians, scientists, and spiritual leaders have grappled with them because their answers could hold the key to explaining the complexities of human existence.

Creating a coherent picture of our earliest relatives can be a challenging undertaking. Even with recent scientific developments and archaeological discoveries, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the evolution of the human species. Crucial pieces of the puzzle are still missing, and every new discovery—fossil or otherwise—has the potential to rewrite our understanding of our own family tree.

In 10 riveting episodes, paleoanthropologist Elen Feuerriegel takes you on an unrivaled tour of the human fossil record in search of the biological and behavioral underpinnings of our very “humanness”. Big Mysteries of Human Evolution draws on current research to highlight (and maybe even help solve) these and other enduring mysteries about our closest ancestors: how the first bipeds took their first steps, how tools gave humans a cutting edge over other species, how early social groups (and diets) were structured, and how modern humans evolved to become the dominant species on the planet.

Think of this Audible Original as On the Origin of Species—updated for the 21st century.

©2022 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2022 Audible Originals, LLC.

Fascinating

A fascinating overview of human evolution by one of the members of the Rising Star team that went down into the treacherous cave to recover the skeletal remains of Homo naleti and ancient hominid species. Outstanding and fun!

LOVE IT

Narration is excellent. Easy evolutionary history lesson for the curious, fun for the scientist.

Fantastic and refreshingly unbiased assessment

The analysis and assessment of information in this audio book is fantastic. Unbiased analysis and interpretation of material throughout which is the most magnificent thing in todays world of constantly being told what and how to think. If only everyone could read this and have a better understanding.

Very current content

I enjoyed this audiobook, with its very current content. Excellent listen
Narrator is lovely 😊 as well

mostly good.

just ignore the woke propaganda sprinkled in the last 2 lectures. beyond that it's good.

Not a casual read

Very informative
Very technical for this series
Very interesting
Not easy
An excellent companion for Sapiens

somewhat subjective material

a small amount of subjectivity is injected into the presentation but overall very informative

Should have covered more

It's a pity, we heard nothing about Australian paleolithic past from an Australian paleoanthropologist. A pdf would also help.

Very listenable

Good book to listen to if you’re interested in archaic humans, as well as extinct relatives from the past couple of million years. Great chapter on Race towards the end of the book. The author reads her book; both the easy to digest prose and her delivery (with her wonderful Australian accent) kept this listener engaged to the end.

Spectacular, however...!

To get a solid grasp on human evolution in only four hours would seem impossible, but Dr. Feurriegel has managed just that. I've listened to this three times now, focusing on something new on each occasion, yet I always finish the whole lecture. Yes, she seems a bit biased against the notion of how important meat consumption was for our development (perhaps she's a vegetarian?) but she does not quite deny it either, and it is true that a meat centric diet would have been impossible to sustain without the "help" of our modern industrialized, and highly unethical, animal farming methods. But everyone is allowed to let their own emotions color the way they process, and present, information, even in the case of a fact based scientist, which she does. So, all is well. Fantastic listen! And yes, her delivery is extremely rapid fire, she does not allow much time to digest even the most thought provoking of findings, and she does present quite a few, and some changes in intonation and volume would have been appreciated as well, but it is great to hear it from the source,