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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
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A STORY OF US
A New Look at Human Evolution
It's time for a story of human evolution that goes beyond describing "ape-men" and talks about what women and children were doing. In a few decades, a torrent of new evidence and ideas about human evolution has allowed scientists to piece together a more detailed understanding of what went on thousands and even millions of years ago.
Our journey began seven million years ago in the African savannah. But two millions years ago, climate change made the environment less hospitable to our primate ancestors. Behavioral choices were made that resulted in the diverse, innovative, and complex societies we humans have created.
In THE STORY OF US, UC Davis-based evolutionary biologists Peter Richerson and Lesley Newson draw on the latest findings in genomics, the fossil record, anthropology, and history to present a refreshingly new narrative about the greatest mystery of all -- how we became human.
Newson and Richerson argue that culture was the secret weapon of homo sapiens's survival. Both parents contributed nutrition to their offspring, unlike in other primate species where the mother raises the baby alone. This allowed bigger brains to form. But critical also was a shared network that transmitted specialized information. Those who were better at using and passing on cultural information were able to make their habitats more livable, find better food sources. Over the generations culture became a more and more important part of human biology.
Today, as our culture grows more global and intellectual, it is propelling us towards another evolutionary crossroads.
Lesley Newson is an evolutionary biologist who was a science journalist in her previous life. She has published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Population and Development Review; Evolution and Human Behavior and many others. She gives annual talks at professional conferences such as Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, British Association for the Advancement of Science, which have an average attendance of between 5,000 and 10,000 members.
Peter Richerson is professor emeritus of environmental science at UC Davis and the author of the classic Not by Genes Alone. He is the winner of several prizes including the J.I. Staley Prize of The School of American Research (with R. Boyd) for contributions to the human sciences. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences. He serves in advisory roles of academic journals (Human Ecology and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Human Ecology Review and many others.) A member of National Academy of Sciences, he is currently president of the Cultural Evolution Society.
In THE STORY OF US, UC Davis-based evolutionary biologists Peter Richerson and Lesley Newson draw on the latest findings in genomics, the fossil record, anthropology, and history to present a refreshingly new narrative about the greatest mystery of all -- how we became human.
Newson and Richerson argue that culture was the secret weapon of homo sapiens's survival. Both parents contributed nutrition to their offspring, unlike in other primate species where the mother raises the baby alone. This allowed bigger brains to form. But critical also was a shared network that transmitted specialized information. Those who were better at using and passing on cultural information were able to make their habitats more livable, find better food sources. Over the generations culture became a more and more important part of human biology.
Today, as our culture grows more global and intellectual, it is propelling us towards another evolutionary crossroads.
Lesley Newson is an evolutionary biologist who was a science journalist in her previous life. She has published scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Population and Development Review; Evolution and Human Behavior and many others. She gives annual talks at professional conferences such as Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, British Association for the Advancement of Science, which have an average attendance of between 5,000 and 10,000 members.
Peter Richerson is professor emeritus of environmental science at UC Davis and the author of the classic Not by Genes Alone. He is the winner of several prizes including the J.I. Staley Prize of The School of American Research (with R. Boyd) for contributions to the human sciences. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and has been elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences. He serves in advisory roles of academic journals (Human Ecology and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Human Ecology Review and many others.) A member of National Academy of Sciences, he is currently president of the Cultural Evolution Society.
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Book
Published 2021-03-01 by Oxford University Press |