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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
By: Ian Tattersall
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The Sediments of Time
- My Lifelong Search for the Past
- By: Meave Leakey, Samira Leakey
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant!
- By tess koffler on 04-07-21
By: Meave Leakey, and others
-
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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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
-
Brave Attempt
- By Bill Treat on 10-15-22
By: Madelaine Böhme
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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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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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A Pocket History of Human Evolution
- How We Became Sapiens
- By: Silvana Condemi, Francois Savatier
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well presented and very informative.
- By Jim Griggs on 11-11-21
By: Silvana Condemi, and others
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, 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
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
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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Paleontology
- A Brief History of Life
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 112
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 72
Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings. Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth's environment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great summary of where we are with understanding
- By david on 06-25-11
By: Ian Tattersall
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When Life Nearly Died
- The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 156
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 131
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 131
Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. It is far less widely understood that a much greater catastrophe took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: at least 90 percent of life on earth was destroyed. When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction, but also the recent renewal of the idea of catastrophism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Obscurity to Enlightenment - A Mystery Revealed
- By Dipam on 03-18-21
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A Short History of Humanity
- A New History of Old Europe
- By: Johannes Krause, Thomas Trappe, Caroline Waight - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 163
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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
-
Born in Africa
- The Quest for the Origins of Human Life
- By: Martin Meredith
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 54
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies, as well as their feats of skill and endurance. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than 20 species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Brief History of Paleoanthropology
- By Jeff Harris on 05-06-13
By: Martin Meredith
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First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer
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Written in Stone
- Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
- By: Brian Switek
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 308
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 258
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 254
Spectacular fossil finds make today's headlines; new technology unlocks secrets of skeletons unearthed 100 years ago. Still, evolution is often poorly represented by the media and misunderstood by the public. A potent antidote to pseudoscience, Written in Stone is an engrossing history of evolutionary discovery for anyone who has marveled at the variety and richness of life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very good but has some weaknesses
- By Anonymous User on 06-23-19
By: Brian Switek
-
How to Clone a Mammoth
- The Science of De-Extinction
- By: Beth Shapiro
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 128
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Could extinct species, like mammoths and passenger pigeons, be brought back to life? The science says yes. In How to Clone a Mammoth, Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist and pioneer in "ancient DNA" research, walks listeners through the astonishing and controversial process of de-extinction.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Very Readable Take on a Complex Subject
- By John on 04-26-15
By: Beth Shapiro
-
Why Evolution Is True
- By: Jerry A. Coyne
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,924
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,440
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,436
Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact. In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design", there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned: the evidence, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
As great as everyone says it is
- By Joseph on 12-01-10
By: Jerry A. Coyne
-
A Series of Fortunate Events
- Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You
- By: Sean B. Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean B. Carroll
- Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 111
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason, or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
We are for a short time.
- By Anonymous User on 10-14-20
By: Sean B. Carroll
-
Neanderthal Man
- In Search of Lost Genomes
- By: Svante Pääbo
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 777
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 688
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 692
A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent science tale
- By Neuron on 01-19-15
By: Svante Pääbo
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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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Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.
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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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The story of our world and the different living things that have populated it is an amazing epic with millions of species, exotic settings, planet-wide cataclysms, and surprising plot twists. These 36 lectures tell the all-embracing story of life on Earth - its origins, extinctions, and evolutions - in a manner that assumes no background in science. At half an hour per lecture, you’ll cover the entire 4.54-billion-year history of Earth in 18 hours, averaging 70,000 years per second!
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Get the video version
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Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.
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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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Paleoatmospheres reveal species success or failure
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A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 209
In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa—spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago. Lead researcher Berger had never made his way into the dark, cramped, dangerous underground spaces where many of the naledi fossils had been found. Now he was ready to do so. Once inside the cave, Berger made shocking new discoveries that expand our understanding of this early hominid.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and interesting but may trigger claustrophobia
- By M on 09-03-23
By: Lee Berger, and others
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Otherlands
- A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
- By: Thomas Halliday
- Narrated by: Adetomiwa Edun
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 224
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 183
The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book brilliantly read
- By Dipam on 04-06-22
By: Thomas Halliday
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Fossil Men
- The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
- By: Kermit Pattison
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 515
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 434
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 429
In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must-listen for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Oh narrator
- By Paul on 01-21-21
By: Kermit Pattison
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Masters of the Planet
- The Search for Our Human Origins
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Some Sloppy Editing
- By DB on 11-23-20
By: Ian Tattersall
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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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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 13
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 13
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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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 824
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 697
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 689
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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5 out of 5 stars
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I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By melody sheldon on 03-31-19
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 21
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 17
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
What listeners say about The World Before Us
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 12-23-22
Very good
A bit more technical detail than i needed in places. It was still very good
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Phil
- 01-03-23
Discoveries that put us in new light
Excellent and excitedly informative
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.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- paul krefting
- 03-19-24
the Latest on Human Descent
Recent archeology and lab techniques bring us up to date on several strains of early humans from around the world.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- L. Fuller
- 12-10-24
Comprehensive and fascinating.
Very comprehensive in covering our genus, Homo, but also comprehensive in its coverage of new tools and techniques in anthropology and archaeology especially genomics.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- James H.
- 10-12-23
Neurophysiologist review
Many new discoveries that shine a light on who we are and our journey. Technical in the best ways. What an amazing family tree.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 01-07-23
Excellent and informative
Fascinating and profound. Expertly written and read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in human origins.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 12-22-23
FINALLY! Denisovan details Revealed
Outstanding work that gives us SCIENTIFIC origins of Denisovans. Stunning revelations about our human history and migrations based upon eight bones recovered by dedicated scientists. I am waiting with great anticipation for the sequel when more Denisovan remains are recovered and perhaps even the “ghost population” further expanded our understanding. Thank you
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Gwyn
- 02-29-24
Please write more!
I have enjoyed your book thoroughly. You have given me much to ponder and think about. Please keep writing and narrating your books!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Henry G. Stanton
- 11-07-22
Full of penetrating insight and intriguing ideas
Though the book occasionally does the infuriating celebrity scientist thing of slipping into sappy autobiography, it is mostly full of data and insights that are provided by someone who is both expert and articulate in his field. The reader’s breathy melodramatic reading was at first off-putting, then amusing and finally felt like a genuine passion for the material. I was all set to dismiss the book as more celebrity scientist hubris and discovered I was all wrong. The book is excellent - the product of experts who are deeply devoted to the discovery and understanding of the discipline.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 07-01-23
Awesome information of genetics in recent archeology
Loved the information and the pdf to follow along, the stories of some of the people and places in the book keep it conversational at parts to break up the science.
Well read and written!
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