HUMAN ORIGINS: 7 Million Years and Counting

2022 revised paperback edition of a book which answers the profound question 'Where do we come from?' The story and study of human evolution is one of extraordinary discoveries, daring adventures and often spectacularly vehement arguments, and encompassing a swathe of technical disciplines. The first seven chapters tell the story in chronological order beginning with the earliest primates, the earliest ape-like hominins, and concluding with the rise of modern civilisation. Our distant ancestors most likely evolved in Asia, in a hothouse world newly free of dinosaurs more than 55 million years ago in the lush rainforests. A fossil unveiled in 2013 might give us an idea of what this crucial ancestor looked like when the American palaeontologist Christopher Beard and his colleagues found Archicebus achilles in eastern China. It has the relatively small eyes of an animal active during the day and the sharp molar teeth of an insect-eater. Significantly it also has the hind limbs and flexible foot of a primate gripping with its feet and leaping through branches. Homo sapiens has in the blink of an evolutionary eye spread around the globe, taken control of earth's biological and mineral resources, transformed the environment, discovered the secrets of the universe, and travelled into space. Discover how our ancestors made their first tentative steps, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation - perhaps the only one of its kind in the universe. How did we get to where we are? Where are we going? The astonishing evolution is told in this brief overview. 241pp, paperback with illus. and maps and diagrams.