New Scientist Essential Guide 4 2020 Our Human Story.pdf

(18597 KB) Pobierz
ESSENTIAL
GUIDE№4
WHERE WE CAME FROM
WHO OUR ANCESTORS WERE
HOW HUMANS SPREAD
ACROSS THE WORLD
THE LOST “OTHERS”
AND MORE
OUR
HUMAN
STORY
HOW ONE SPECIES
WALKED UPRIGHT
AND CONQUERED
THE WORLD
EDITED BY
KATE DOUGLAS
NEW
SCIENTIST
ESSENTIAL
GUIDE
OUR
HUMAN
STORY
HE human story starts somewhere in
Africa with one ape learning to walk upright,
and ends with one of their descendants
dominating the world. It is a fascinating, yet
frustratingly incomplete, tale – and one that
seems to gain added complexity every time
a new fossil bone or piece of DNA evidence is found.
As with its three predecessors in the
Essential Guide
series, this volume is curated from the best content
from
New Scientist’s
recent archive, specially revised
and updated to bring you up to speed with the latest
developments. It covers a lot of ground, from our
earliest African origins to a discussion of some of
the qualities, such as our morality, our art and our
language, that have made us uniquely successful.
To that list we might add our talent for navel gazing.
In that spirit, I hope you enjoy this overview of the
story of our species. Don’t forget, if you missed
previous editions of the
Essential Guides,
they are
all available to buy online at shop.newscientist.com.
And if you don’t want to miss a further issue, all
the Essential
Guides
are available on subscription at
newscientist.com/essentialguide. Feedback is welcome
at essentialguides@newscientist.com.
Kate Douglas
NEW SCIENTIST ESSENTIAL GUIDES
25 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON WC2E 9ES
+44 (0)20 7611 1200
© 2020 NEW SCIENTIST LTD, ENGLAND
NEW SCIENTIST ESSENTIAL GUIDES
ARE PUBLISHED BY NEW SCIENTIST LTD
ISSN 2634-0151
PRINTED IN THE UK BY
PRECISION COLOUR PRINTING LTD AND
DISTRIBUTED BY MARKETFORCE UK LTD
+44 (0)20 3148 3333
ESSENTIAL GUIDES
SERIES EDITOR
Richard Webb
DESIGN
Craig Mackie
SUBEDITOR
Chris Simms
PRODUCTION AND APP
Joanne Keogh
TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT (APP)
Amardeep Sian
PUBLISHER
Nina Wright
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Emily Wilson
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
+44 (0)20 7611 1291
displayads@newscientist.com
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Kate Douglas is a feature editor for
New Scientist
with broad interests
across human evolution, psychology and the life sciences
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS
Colin Barras, Emily Benson, Catherine Brahic, Andy Coghlan, Alison George,
Alice Klein, Will Knight, Mike Marshall, Rachel Nowak, Mark Pagel, David Robson,
Eleanor Scerri, Laura Spinney, Clare Wilson, Ed Yong
New Scientist Essential Guide | Our Human Story |
1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
THE NEW
FOSSIL
STORY
Fossil finds have traditionally been
the foundation on which we built our
understanding of the human story.
But, over the past few years, some
extraordinary finds have called into
question almost every assumption
we had made about how long we have
walked on Earth, who our ancestors
were and where we really come from.
p. 6
Bones of contention
p. 14
The earliest humans
p. 16
Four rare early ancestors
p. 17
How to date a fossil
p. 18
PROFILE: Lee Berger
A 21st-century fossil hunter
THE ORIGIN
OF OUR
SPECIES
The origins of
Homo sapiens
lie in
Africa. That much isn’t seriously
in dispute, but beyond that,
discoveries of new fossils and tools,
plus analyses of ancient and modern
DNA, are tearing apart any neatness
to the story of how one member of
the Homo genus came to walk upright
and take over the world.
p. 24
Africa – but where and when?
p. 31
The making of the modern mind
p. 32
Our rainbow origins
WHAT
ANCIENT DNA
TELLS US
Little more than a decade ago, the first
ancient genome was sequenced. Since
then, palaeogeneticists have been
probing DNA from more ancient fossils
to find out how they fit into the human
family tree, as well as looking at
genomes of living populations – with
results that upend preconceptions
about our heritage still further.
p. 38
The ghosts within us
p. 43
How DNA reveals our prehistory
p. 46
Our ancient inheritance
p. 47
What counts as human?
2
| New Scientist Essential Guide | Our Human Story
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
GOING
GLOBAL
THE
“OTHERS”
WHAT MAKES
US HUMAN?
One of the defining features of
Homo sapiens
is that we are a
global species, spread into most
corners of Earth. How did that come
to be?
As with all else in the human story,
our understanding is evolving – but
there is much we can say about how
humans left their homeland to journey
to Eurasia, Australasia and beyond.
p. 52
When did humans leave Africa?
p. 57
An Australasian odyssey
p. 62
Into the Americas
Our ancestry is not so much a
family tree as a tangled family
bush, with many more branches and
interconnections than we knew.
We have very little evidence of what
life was like for most of these other
hominins, but for a few more recent
members of our family, we are piecing
together a richer picture.
p. 70
Homo neanderthalensis:
Not so brutish?
p. 75
Where do the Neanderthals
fit in?
p. 76
The mysterious Denisovans
p. 79
Homo floresiensis:
The diminutive hobbit
Most of the traits once thought
uniquely human, such as culture and
tool use, are found to a lesser extent
in other animals. But there are a few
that we alone seem to possess, such
as complex language. How and why
these evolved can provide unexpected
insights into the journey we took to
becoming human.
p. 84
ESSAY: Richard Wrangham
The good (and bad) ape
p. 88
The cave art code
p. 92
The power of language
New Scientist Essential Guide | Our Human Story |
3

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin