About this item
50,000 years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their own precursors had been doing for millions of years. Yet something about our species separated it from the pack, and led to its survival while the rest became extinct. So just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become Masters of the Planet? Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tattersall takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long term evolutionary refinement.
About the Author
Ian Tattersall, a Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is a paleoanthropologist and primate biologist of long experience. He has conducted fieldwork in places as diverse as Yemen, Vietnam, and Madagascar, and besides being a prolific contributor to the technical literature in these areas, he has written widely for the public on topics ranging from the biology of the lemurs of Madagascar, and the natural history of wine, to the evolution of humankind. His current laboratory research involves trying to understand how human beings acquired their highly unusual cognitive system, and his current fieldwork involves practical research for a forthcoming book on the Natural History of Beer. His most recently published book (with Peter Nevraumont) is "Hoax. A History of Deception: 5000 Years of Fakes, Forgeries, and Fallacies."