Silvana Condemi - Böcker

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.

Since the Western world first became aware of the existence of Neanderthals, this Pleistocene human has been a regular focus of interest among specialists and also among the general public. In fact, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other extinct human population. Furthermore, over the past 150 years no other palaeospecies has been such a constant source of discussion and fierce debate among palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists. This book presents the status of our knowledge as well as the methods and techniques used to study this extinct population and it suggests perspectives for future research.

Since the Western world first became aware of the existence of Neanderthals, this Pleistocene human has been a regular focus of interest among specialists and also among the general public. In fact, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other extinct human population. Furthermore, over the past 150 years no other palaeospecies has been such a constant source of discussion and fierce debate among palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists. This book presents the status of our knowledge as well as the methods and techniques used to study this extinct population and it suggests perspectives for future research.

In December 2010, scientists discovered a fragment of a finger bone in the remote, isolated Denisova Cave in Siberia. To their surprise, the bone contained neither Homo sapiens nor Neanderthal DNA. Rather, the fast-advancing science of paleogenetics revealed that the DNA came from a previously unknown species of hominids—the Denisovans (as they almost immediately came to be called)—who shared a common ancestor with both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.This first and subsequent Denisovan fossil discoveries required paleoanthropologists, including world-leading researcher and author Silvana Condemi, to reconsider their understanding of our ancestors and their successive prehistoric migrations out of Africa and into and throughout Eurasia tens of thousands of years ago.Leading us through the excavation of Denisova Cave, the sequencing of the Denisovan genome, and recent fossil research, Condemi and her coauthor, science journalist François Savatier, explore how the Denisovans migrated throughout Asia and with whom they interacted along the way, as well as the comparisons and divergences between the evolutionary processes of Denisovans and our other ancestor cousins, Neanderthals. They help us to understand and appreciate how today’s inhabitants of East Asia—from Siberia to the Philippines—carry up to 5 percent of Denisovan DNA, and they revise the epic story of our ancient human ancestors’ immense journeys as they peopled our planet.