Human life, and how we came to be, is one of the greatest scientific and
philosophical questions of our time. This compact and accessible book
presents a modern view of human evolution. Written by a leading
authority, it lucidly and engagingly explains not only the evolutionary
process, but the technologies currently used to unravel the evolutionary
past and emergence of Homo sapiens. By separating the history of
palaeoanthropology from current interpretation of the human fossil
record, it lays numerous misconceptions to rest, and demonstrates that
human evolution has been far from the linear struggle from primitiveness
to perfection that we've been led to believe. It also presents a
coherent scenario for how Homo sapiens contrived to cross a formidable
cognitive barrier to become an extraordinary and unprecedented thinking
creature. Elegantly illustrated, Understanding Human Evolution is for
anyone interested in the complex and tangled story of how we came to be.