The World Before Us
The New Science Behind Our Human Origins
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The World Before Us
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Narrated by:
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John Sackville
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By:
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Tom Higham
About this listen
A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.
Fifty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was not the only species of humans in the world. There were also Neanderthals in what is now Europe, the Near East, and parts of Eurasia, hobbits (H. floresiensis) on the island of Flores in Indonesia, Denisovans in Siberia and Eastern Eurasia, and H. luzonensis in the Philippines. Tom Higham investigates what we know about these other human species and explores what can be learned from the genetic links between them and us. He also looks at whether H. erectus may have survived into the period when our ancestors first moved into Southeast Asia.
Filled with thrilling tales of recent scientific discoveries, this book offers an engaging synopsis of our current understanding of human origins and raises new and interesting possibilities - particularly concerning what contact, if any, these other species might have had with us prior to their extinction.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2021 Tom Higham (P)2021 Yale Press AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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.
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In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics - archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology - which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not a short history of humanity
- By Brent on 05-02-21
By: Johannes Krause, and others
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Ancient Bones
- Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human
- By: Madelaine Böhme
- Narrated by: Aimée Ayotte
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Africa has long been considered the cradle of life - where life and humans evolved - but somewhere west of Munich, Germany, paleoclimatologist and paleontologist Madelaine Böhme and her team make a discovery that is beyond anything they ever imagined: the 12-million-year-old bones of an ancient ape - Danuvius guggenmos - which makes headlines around the world and defies prevailing theories of human history and where human life began.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brave Attempt
- By Bill Treat on 10-15-22
By: Madelaine Böhme
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World Prehistory
- The Basics
- By: Brian M. Fagan, Nadia Durrani
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
Why is world prehistory important in the modern world? What does it tell us about ourselves? Providing a simple, but entertaining and stimulating, account of the prehistoric past from human origins to today from a global perspective, World Prehistory: The Basics is the ideal guide to the story of our early human past and its relevance to the modern world.
By: Brian M. Fagan, and others
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Denisovan Origins
- Hybrid Humans, Göbekli Tepe, and the Genesis of the Giants of Ancient America
- By: Andrew Collins, Gregory L. Little
- Narrated by: Micah Hanks
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
Tracing the migrations of the Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas, Andrew Collins and Greg Little explore how the new mental capabilities of the Denisovan-Neanderthal and Denisovan-human hybrids greatly accelerated the flowering of human civilization over 40,000 years ago. They show how the Denisovans displayed sophisticated advances, including precision-machined stone tools and jewelry, tailored clothing, celestially-aligned architecture, and horse domestication.
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2 out of 5 stars
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There are better sources to get real information
- By cfeagans on 09-06-19
By: Andrew Collins, and others
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Kindred
- By: Rebecca Wragg Sykes
- Narrated by: Rebecca Wragg Sykes
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 376
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 312
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 310
In Kindred, Neanderthal expert Becky Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland and reveals the Neanderthal you don’t know, who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change. Using a thematic rather than chronological approach, this book will shed new light on where they lived, what they ate and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that is being discovered.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Horrible Recording/Sound Quality
- By Howard Houchen on 11-24-20
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1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
- The Year Civilization Collapsed
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: Eric H. Cline
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 695
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 604
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 603
This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Look past the one-star reviews: this is an enlightening and engaging read.
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-07-22
By: Eric H. Cline
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Extinctions
- How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 21
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story5 out of 5 stars 18
Cutting-edge techniques across biology, chemistry, physics, and geology have transformed our understanding of the deep past, including the discovery of a previously unknown mass extinction. This compelling evidence, revealing a series of environmental crises resulting in the near collapse of life on Earth, illuminates our current dilemmas in exquisite detail.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Gets better as you go
- By Texas Mama on 01-31-25
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The First Americans
- In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery
- By: J.M. Adovasio, Jake Page
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
J. M. Adovasio has spent the last thirty years at the center of one of our most fiery scientific debates: Who were the first humans in the Americas, and how and when did they get there? At its heart, The First Americans is the story of the revolution in thinking that Adovasio and his fellow archaeologists have brought about, and the firestorm it has ignited.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth a read/listen
- By Thomas Gordon on 01-16-23
By: J.M. Adovasio, and others
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Ancestors
- A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials
- By: Alice Roberts
- Narrated by: Alice Roberts
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons – from their burial sites. Although we have very little evidence of what life was like in prehistorical times, here their stories are told through the bones and funerary offerings left behind, preserved in the ground for thousands of years.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Current narrative
- By James on 06-26-21
By: Alice Roberts
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First Steps
- How Upright Walking Made Us Human
- By: Jeremy DeSilva
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mammalian Bipedalism's Many Layers
- By Sarah C. on 06-07-22
By: Jeremy DeSilva
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere
- By: Paulette F. C. Steeves
- Narrated by: Kristin Aikin Salada
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Impeccable, but poorly rated by racists.
- By Kate sierras on 07-07-23
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The Seven Daughters of Eve
- The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
- By: Bryan Sykes
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 310
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 266
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 264
In 1994 Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over 5,000 years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly revelatory was his successful identification of a genetic descendant of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today. How was Sykes able to locate a living relative?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eurocentric
- By Ann on 04-09-20
By: Bryan Sykes
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The Book of Humans
- A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War, and the Evolution of Us
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 210
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 190
Evolutionary theory has long established that humans are animals: Modern Homo sapiens are primates who share an ancestor with monkeys and other great apes. Our genome is 98 percent identical to a chimpanzee's. And yet we think of ourselves as exceptional. Are we? In this original and entertaining tour of life on Earth, Adam Rutherford explores the profound paradox of the "human animal".
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2 out of 5 stars
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Scattered and anecdotal
- By Nemo71 on 09-29-19
By: Adam Rutherford
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After the Dinosaurs
- The Age of Mammals (Life of the Past Series)
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
The fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins. The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic Park, but it was an amazing time in earth's history, populated by a wonderful assortment of bizarre animals. The rapid evolution of thousands of species of mammals brought forth many incredible creatures—including our own ancestors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Mammals are immersed in minutia.
- By Bertha Watkins on 04-01-24
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A Story of Us
- A New Look at Human Evolution
- By: Lesley Newson, Pete Richerson
- Narrated by: Mike Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
In A Story of Us, they present this rich narrative and explain how the evolution of our genes relates to the evolution of our cultures. Newson and Richerson take listeners through seven stages of human evolution, beginning seven million years ago with the apes that were the ancestors of humans and today's chimps and bonobos. The story ends in the present day and offers a glimpse into the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A glimpse into the lives of our ancestors.
- By Casey B. on 07-22-22
By: Lesley Newson, and others
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A New History of Life
- The Radical New Discoveries About the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth
- By: Peter Ward, Joe Kirschvink
- Narrated by: William Elsman
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 9
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Story5 out of 5 stars 9
Charles Darwin’s theories, first published more than 150 years ago, still set the paradigm of how we understand the evolution of life—but scientific advances of recent decades have radically altered that understanding. In fact the currently accepted history of life on Earth is flawed and out of date. Now two pioneering scientists, one already an award-winning popular author, deliver an eye-opening narrative that synthesizes a generation’s worth of insights from new research.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure
- By Katibird on 11-25-23
By: Peter Ward, and others
Very good
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Great exploration of the 21st century science that may well revolutionize medicine of the future and proved understanding of how we are, how we were and how we will be.
Discoveries that put us in new light
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the Latest on Human Descent
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Comprehensive and fascinating.
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Neurophysiologist review
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Excellent and informative
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FINALLY! Denisovan details Revealed
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Please write more!
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Full of penetrating insight and intriguing ideas
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Well read and written!
Awesome information of genetics in recent archeology
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