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A Pocket History of Human Evolution

How We Became Sapiens

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A Pocket History of Human Evolution

Written by: Silvana Condemi, Francois Savatier
Narrated by: Christa Lewis
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About this listen

Why aren't we more like other apes? How did we win the evolutionary race? Find out how "wise" Homo sapiens really are.

Prehistory has never been more exciting: New discoveries are overturning long-held theories left and right. Stone tools in Australia date back 65,000 years -a time when, we once thought, the first Sapiens had barely left Africa. DNA sequencing has unearthed a new hominid group - the Denisovans - and confirmed that crossbreeding with them (and Neanderthals) made Homo sapiens who we are today.

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.

©2019 Silvana Condemi and François Savatier (P)2019 Tantor Ancient Archaeology Biological Sciences Science Ancient Humans
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This book starts out well with available evidence, but quickly turns into a biased story based on the authors interpretation with little evidence. The authors ignore the genetic evidence that all humans outside Africa, share a common ancestor that can be traced to a single migration. Instead the story tries to promote an idea that separate sapiens spread around the world, and only a single "advanced version" with the skills and organization moved later into Europe ..... is this the beginning of white supremacy. This has no basis on evidence, and uses colonial social concepts transferred to ancient people to explain why Europeans could develop jewellery, farming, artists, education etc. There is also an attempt to link dark skins to southern populations from an earlier (aka less developed) migrations, who did not develop "Hoards with Wolves", which gave them the macho advantage. This goes against all the genetic evidence (single ancestor), cave drawings and tools from Asia, and a total lack of archaeological evidence, except for caves/burial mounds in Northern Europe. The inclusion of organized religion and marriage traditions as part of the Hoards culture is really a stretch.
It quickly becomes a fairy-tale. Filled with stories of human sacrifice, tribal wars etc, It totally ignores the evidence of ancient Chinese and Asian history that gave rise to great artworks, architecture, philosophies, etc. from similar piles of stone tools. It ignores the tremendous number of tribal communities alive today, that do not engage in warfare and cannibalism. Sadly its a useless book for anyone interested in early human development, unless you are looking for a rather biased ethnocentric view.

Good but very biased

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