NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTIC, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND
NEW STATESMAN
A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the
evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans
were, are, and might yet be
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and
widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon,
and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the
consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer,
and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development
to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of
all--the human being.
To experience the Upper Paleolithic era--a turning point when humans
became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster
learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living
in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England.
He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill
and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful
dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in
one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our
connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic
settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment--the age of reason and
the end of the soul--Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms,
cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and
disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much
of what ails us.
Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture,
medical law and ethics, Being a Human is one man's audacious attempt
to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious,
fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future
ultimately shows how we might best live on earth--and thrive.
