Evolution: The Human Story, 2nd Edition Hardcover – July 10, 2018

“Evolution: the Human History, 2nd edition” by Dr. Alice Roberts is by far the best work I’ve read on the topic of human evolution. The reason is simple: she clearly explains- shows- the course of human evolution over the last ten million years. I smile at myself as I write this, but the generous amount of large, high-quality photographs and renderings enlightened me more than whole books had done previously. These visual aids are accompanied by explanatory paragraphs that contextualize and clarify.The book is broken into five sections. The first sections basically are prologue to the emergence of primates, the genus to which humans belong. Ms. Parker includes some real nuggets in her writing. For instance, though I’ve been reading about the history of agriculture for over two years now, no book I’ve encountered has mentioned the deeper history of grasses, grasslands, and prairies, certainly worth knowing when studying the evolution of plants. Ms. Roberts notes that grasses first appeared around 55 million years ago, that grasslands expanded 35 million years ago, and that prairies evolved on all continents 25-20 million years ago. This establishes a terminus ante quem for when primates could leave the trees and begin living in savannahs, a habitat that favors walking on two instead of four limbs.Perhaps the heart of the books is Ms. Roberts’ detailed depiction and description of the evolution of apes into hominins. The photos and drawings show how all the important features changed: head, limbs, digits, rib cage, spine, pelvis, etc. She also explains why they changed, at least insofar as we can answer the question. Many questions remain unresolved and some seemingly sure answers will be revised in the future.The last two sections cover the spread of homo sapiens out of Africa and its colonization of every continent. Because this is the second edition, updated in 2018, Ms. Roberts could include the fact that Neanderthal and homo sapiens interbred as proven by DNA analysis, a very important discovery. She closes the book by broadly describing the first major civilizations in the Near East, China, and the Americas.Ms. Roberts book is the finest of its kind for the average reader. I would recommend this book to all age groups, but especially students in high school and college. It is wonderfully free of political cant- it talks about climate change (a constant since the beginning of earth) without any gratuitous assertions of man-made global warming. It grabs and holds the reader’s attention and broadly traces themes and ideas that other books can explain with more depth. It’s an achievement.

This book is the best I've read on Human Evolution. Much more graphic than text. The text is very informative and covers most important points, but the graphics illustrate the concepts and context better than most.Simple and well explained processes early in the book, such as Geologic processes and Plate Tectonics, Geologic Time, and even the process of Fossilization are very well explained and graphically illustrated.Most of the latter part of the book consists of well explained and illustrated descriptions of the various fossils found thus far. These go from pre-human, even pre-Australopithecus, to early modern humans (Homo sapiens). All are well illustrated as well as a textual explanation. Brief behavioral explanations are also included, which become more and more suppositional as the earliest fossils are examined. Especially important are the well explained methods used to examine and attempt to explain their environment and behavior.A well recommended read!

I’m taking an Anthropology class and using this as an extra educational book alongside the text book..it’s a good sized book (think coffee table book) with LOTS of pictures, diagrams, timelines and graphs…

Evolution, the Human Story, ed. by Alice Roberts is the best illustrated book I have ever read. The amazing detailed reconstructions of our ancestors are fantastic and as accurate as the fossil skulls and post-cranial skeletons allow. The maps and photographs of artifacts accompanied by the expert commentaries are invaluable. It is unreasonable to expect that a single volume can cover so large a topic spanning several continents and several million years, but this book surpassed my expectations. The book should be in every school library. It was first published in 2011, too early for the authors to fully appreciate the development of DNA analyses of ancient fossils and the recognition of previously unknown species such as Homo denisova. H. denisova was the first hominin species to be revealed not by fossil classificattion but by mtDNA and nuclear DNA sequencing in 2010. Subsequently, more recent fossil fragments have yielded evidence of the species throughout Eastern Asia, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia, far beyond Denisova Cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia. However, DNA does not yield the direct physical evidence for illustrating the faces of our ancestors or much of our behavior. While early bipedal hominoids can be illustrated, language and music, our own most important defining communicative behaviors, left us with no visible traces. It has been my purpose in recent years to address this dearth of knowledge, but I have to assume that my readers are already familiar with the plethora of physical evidence so well illustrated in this book.

We used this to provide a supplement for homeschooling history. We really enjoy the DK books and have several of their books. The articles and pictures are well done.

Very good review of the evolution of the hominid genius. Only problem is there are new discoveries constantly being made which sometime makes this excellent book automatically outdated. Still strongly recommended.

Very interesting and cool book

This is a very nice colorful book with lots of pictures on evolution. I'm enjoying it very much. It's large, heavy (I bought hardback), and easy to move from page to page (i.e., the binding is good and not restrictive). I recommend it to anyone interested in an overall reaading on evolution. A "coffee table" book to go back to time and again to pick up where you left off.