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    Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
    Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
    Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
    Audiobook8 hours

    Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins

    Written by Ian Tattersall

    Narrated by Bob Souer

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Fifty thousand years ago-merely a blip in evolutionary time-our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long-term evolutionary refinement. Instead, the final result emerged quickly, shocking our world and changing it forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9781977342614
    Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins

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    Reviews for Masters of the Planet

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    • 5/5
      Illuminating and erudite. Ian Tattersall knows his material and explains it adroitly
    • 3/5
      Good, basic guide through the hominid tangle.
    • 4/5
      Tattersall does a good job of explaining where we came from and how we got here in (mostly) understandable language. I very much enjoyed this book.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating, enlightening glimpse into the evolution of man. It was educational, easy to read/understand, and unexpectedly emotional. I really enjoyed this book!
    • 5/5
      Masters of the Planet is a well written account of the current state of paleoanthropology. Covering ground from the origins of the earliest hominids to the expression of language and use of abstract thinking, Dr. Tattersall tells a riveting story. I must confess that much of what I took for accepted facts about human evolution were ripped apart in the space of two hundred pages.I think this is one of those books that can spin you around and knock a new point of view into your head.Read and be enlightened.
    • 4/5
      A little book that packs a big wallop, this work by Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the Museum of Natural History in New York, relates the state of our knowledge about the evolution of humans. Hint for the perplexed: It's true. Tattersall's conclusion is that the answer to the question "Where does humanity begin?" is at the point where language entered the equation - rather than bipedality, tool-making, or some other characteristic.
    • 4/5
      'Masters of the Planet' provides a very readable account of the search for the beginings of mankind. Using fossil and anthropological evidence Tattersall presents a time-lapse photographic view of human development.
    • 4/5
      As the author said near the end of the book, "When it comes to Homo Sapiens, it seems nothing is simple". And that is even sort of an understatement.This was an amazing book, but it took me so long to get through that I wasn't sure if I was ever going to finish it. (Quite the Tardis book, it seemed bigger on the inside than it was on the outside).It's basically a history of what came before us on Earth, at least in regards to hominid species. He started with when our predecessors were still both in the trees as well as just starting to walk on two feet and upright. And went pretty much chronologically up through time. From the Australopiths to the slightly less than modern Homo Sapiens and then finally to us Modern Humans.He had a ton of interesting points (and I really, really liked some of his turns of phrase, they were hilariously awesome at times), more than I'll repeat here since, y'all should read the book instead. But, I'll highlight a couple of my favorite ones. One of the points was that we can never really understand what the previous hominids who didn't have the brain to use/recognize symbols because it isn't just that they were us but dumber, their brains worked in an entirely different way, and we can't just turn off recognizing/using/etc. the symbolic part of our brain. (Just try. It doesn't even work with something simple like turning that off and not thinking of a cat, a generic or personal one when 'cat' is written.)Also, I didn't realize that one of the theories about some of our fellow hominids was that our (and their) biological form came before our nice wrinkly symbol using brain.The Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens stuff was great and I wish that we knew more about how the different species had interacted.In the end I think I learned almost as much about the modern human bone anatomy as anything else, and I learned a ton about hominid history of course.It was a very great book and by a guy who definitely seemed to know a ton about the subject that he was writing about (always a good thing). And, there was just enough interesting phrasing and prose like writing that what could have turned out horribly dry, while not a breeze to read (I blame the scientific names mostly) was a quite enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      This book is ideally suited for those who have a strong curiosity about the state of our knowledge about human origins but do not have the time or wherewithal to delve through hundreds of pages of research data that would do it justice. The vast scope of the subject is artfully condensed into a form that is capable of holding the reader’s interest from cover to cover. The author succinctly but comprehensively presents an encyclopedic grasp of the subject. As a bonus, a peek is offered into the modern tools available to paleoanthropologists such as DNA analysis, means to identify isotropic evidence, electron microscopes and such.Tattersall frankly admits to the dangers of building inferences from earlier inferences as well as frankly stating where there are disagreements among scholars and where there are gaps in the evidence. He is conservative in style and stops short when speculation gets too far beyond the physical evidence at hand. Several times he repeats the warning that we are burdened with an impossible task when attempting to overlay present cognitive capabilities on ancient beings without those capabilities.There are times where I personally wished he would have gone farther but I acknowledge that it would alter the nature of the book and might be trite. I would like, for example, to have seen some discussion of the controversy (if it still exists) between the single-string versus multiple origin theories of evolution. Also, the question of whether modern man differs from both his near primate cousins and precursors only in degree but, more importantly, in type. There are times when Tattersall seemed to skirt close to those issues when he discusses the possibility that early man’s development outpaced the environmental stresses that have been assumed to have driven them. He suggests, for example, that early hominids might have become bipedal not because their tree swinging habitat was dwindling forcing them to survive on the grassland but that erect locomotion allowed them to exploit a wider range of existence.Another area where the author seems to tantalize readers and to stimulate further research is his discussion of the evolution of pre-active behavior—carrying stones for the making of tools at a future time and place when and where needed, for example. This temporal awareness of past and future may well be the key differentiating factor that sets modern man apart. The extension of operational memory, a sense of the present, to encompass the time necessary for the development of language may be more crucial than Broca’s area of the brain and the structure of the throat and promises to be a fruitful area of future research.Tattersall ends the book with an almost whimsical ‘coda’ that stands on its own as a meaningful essay and scientific ‘testimony’. It is worth the price of the book. It is a personal assessment of his relationship with his profession and presents his own value system. I offer kudos to him.
    • 5/5
      First of all, Thanks to Ian Tattersall for the first-reads book!
      This book was very informative. There was a lot of real information and speculation.
      It was easy to follow and gave me a better understanding of the evolution of our species.
      A definite must-read for anyone who wants to know about the orignins of mankind.
    • 4/5
      Subtitled “The search for our human origins” About 50,000 years ago there were several hominid species, mostly in Africa. The homo sapiens genus dominated and the other species became extinct. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersal surveys the known fossil records, starting earlier with the australopiths, and moving into the latter species. His emphasis is that there is not a direct progression of changes towards homo sapiens, but several different species any one of which might have become dominant. The records are meagre; there are skulls, with estimated brain sizes to infer intelligence, and later there are stone tools, implying some planning and forethought. The manufacture of the tools becomes more complex over time. Tattersall is convinced that the feature that determines the success of homo sapiens is the ability to represent and manipulate nature using symbols. He searches the paleoarcheological record for definite use of symbols; these appear very recently, exemplified by the cave drawings in Europe. The artifact that seems to be the first clearly symbolic representation is an orchre plate with geometric carvings, found in the Blombos Cave in South Africa, from the middle stone age, about 77,000 years ago.“We humans experience ourselves in a very specific kind of way - a way that is, as far as we know, unique in the living world. We are each, as it were, able to conceptualize and characterize ourselves as objects distinct from the rest of Nature - and from the rest of our species. We consciously know that we - and others of our kind - have interior lives. The intellectual resource that allows us to possess such knowledge is our symbolic cognitive style. This is a shorthand term for our ability to dissect the world around us into a huge vocabulary of intangible symbols. These we can recombine in our minds, according to rules that allow an unlimited number of visions to be formulated from a finite set of elements. Using this vocabulary and these rules we are able to generate alternative versions or explanations of the world - and ourselves.”
    • 4/5
      This book works like an executive summary for the discoveries in human evolution to present. It includes locations, dates, mistake corrections, scientific community concurrences and disagreements, and continued mysteries. The author's expertise and knowledge in the field of human evolutionary studies is evident in this story's simplified readability. The reader is not bogged down with extreme details to every discovery, but is given plenty of resources to continue interested research. This is a great complementary book for anyone interested in human evolution.
    • 4/5
      Masters of the Planet provides an excellent overview of the current state of our knowledge of the evolution of humans and other hominids. Back in the 1960s, hominid evolution could still be viewed as unilinear and progressive, leading towards Homo sapiens along a single axis of evolutionary change. As outlined in this book, an impressive array of fossil finds and sophisticated technical analyses have yielded a very different picture, one in which diverse lineages of hominids existed simultaneously and interacted. The profusion of paleontological discoveries has buried the traditional creationist myth of "missing links." Indeed, the sheer number of fossils and structurally intermediate forms has sometimes made it difficult to determine which of the many candidates is closely- related to which. Ian Tattersall, author of Masters of the Planet, is curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He brings to the issues a lifetime of expertise in hominid evolution, as well as abundant experience in writing books and articles for fellow scientists and general audiences. The book is organized historically, and traces the diverse and complicated history of hominids over the past 7-8 million years. Beginning with the ancient origins of the hominid lineage, it outlines the rise of bipedal apes, the variety of australopiths (including "Lucy"), life on the savannah, emergence from Africa (an event that occurred multiple times), the spread of early Homo throughout the Old World continents, the enigmatic Neandertals (distant cousins to ourselves, not ancestors – except to the degree in which we interbred), and ultimately, the arrival of modern H. sapiens. The book does not focus entirely on skeletal features. Rather, such aspects as development of social behavior, running ability, loss of body hair, diet, use of fire, and cooking all get their due. Tattersall's account leads towards recognition of the distinctiveness of our species, as manifested by language as well as symbolic behavior, features that he considers to be responsible for our species' success. In tracing hominid diversity and evolutionary history, Tattersall draws on contemporary technological analyses to reveal details that would have been unimaginable a decade or so ago. Thus, readers may be surprised to find what isotope analyses have revealed about diets of early hominids, and what genetic analyses have shown about skin and hair color in Neandertals. Tattersall does not shy from recognizing unresolved issues and persistent controversies. He fairly presents alternative viewpoints, and freely acknowledges areas where a scarcity of evidence has rendered divergent interpretations viable. As one who has read many books on hominid evolution, I found Tattersall's work to be interesting and informative. My copy is now replete with penciled comments and bent- down page corners to mark fascinating issues and controversial matters. While the book's dealings with uniqueness of our own species' overlaps that of Brian Fagan's recent Cro-Magnon, I found Tattersall's account preferable in some respects. The latter recognizes the emergence of artistic expression (starting at least 70,000 years ago) as a worldwide phenomenon rather than one local to Europe and Asia, in accord with its status as a species characteristic. Notwithstanding my high regard for this book, it is not free of error. The hyoid apparatus is not a "bony portion of the Adam's apple" (as stated on page 36). Rather, the hyoid consists of thin cartilages that support the tongue and its musculature, while the so-called Adam's apple is the larynx. (How the two could be confused by a paleo-anatomist is most puzzling). "Exaptation" is wrongly presented as a non- adaptationist mechanism (pages 44, 68, and 210), in which features arise by chance and only later evolve to take on a function. Evolutionary biologists will recognize this characterization as mistaken. In exaptation, features that are evolutionary adapted to serve one function are transformed through natural selection to serve some new function (as outlined in Gould and Vrba's original 1982 paper in Paleobiology and throughout the modern literature). As another example, the author suggests that "members of the genus Homo have been consistently predisposed in the same way towards brain size increase"(page 132) since brain enlargement occurred in three separate lineages. However, one need not infer any special mechanism or attribute unique to our genus. A trend towards brain enlargement has occurred independently in many mammalian lineages, as well as in numerous linages of birds and cartilaginous fishes, and even among molluscs and arthropods. In this respect, hominids appear (with aquatic mammals) as an extreme example of a widespread evolutionary trend.Some interpretations in the book are quite speculative, leading to weak inferences. For example, discovery of one toothless male skull (the Dmanisi specimen) is taken as evidence for long- term compassionate behavior among Homo erectus era hominids, on the grounds that the individual would not have been able to chew his own food. (Page 124: "…it seems entirely reasonable to conclude that the Dmanisi hominids had the cognitive reserves to express their fellow- feeling in the form of material support"). In view of the profusion of other interpretations, the inference is unnecessarily speculative. One might also question the book's central claim that emergence of artistic expression in our species paralleled the development of a unique form of psychology, as manifested in our capacity for symbolic thought. Fossils reveal little about psychology, and how early symbolic thought arose arguably is entirely a matter of speculation – cave art and jewelry notwithstanding. Such issues do not detract from a work that, on the whole, is one of the best modern accounts available; indeed, some of the above manifests the fascinating and thought – provoking nature of this book. Overall, I would strongly recommend Masters of the Planet as an interesting and informative account of the diversity and evolutionary history of the bipedal apes and we their peculiar descendants.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed "Masters of the Planet" but cannot match some of the other reviews with respect to the science. I was nevertheless inspired and spent a lot of time thinking about each chapter. I was at the same time reading and enjoying Sebastian Faulks' brilliant novel "Human Traces" and at one point in the sweeping historical saga one of the characters visits the then "German East Africa' on a scientific expediton. They visit the famous footprints in the lava (actually discovered by Mary Leakey at Laetoli in 1978) but it is a thrilling story. After finishing the novel, I read the author's notes and acknowledgements and found that he thanked Professor Ian Tattersall at the Amercian Museum of Natural History and two other professors for assistance in this area. Reading the 2 books together was an unexpected pleasure. I am grateful to have received this book from librarything and it was an enjoyable update on new research in the area.
    • 4/5
      Masters of the Planet provides a comprehensive discussion of human origins: "a chronological account of the long and astonishing process whereby our ancient ancestor, an unusual but not particularly extraordinary primate variation, became transformed into the amazing and unprecedented creature that Homo sapiens is today." [26] Paleontologist Tattersall predictably emphasizes the fossil record but amplifies our understanding of human evolution in interesting ways: consults comparative linguistics and neuroscience research to speculate on emergence of symbolic thought; uses morphological and genetic analysis to look into hominid speciation; explains how isotope analysis marks the transition from herbivore to omnivore; even where evidence from head lice & pubic lice suggests when in evolution we humans lost our body hair. Tattersall argues that like any other genus, hominids fielded many species over time, and at various stages of the evolutionary period there were multiple hominid species competing for food and possibly borrowing techniques, perhaps even interbreeding. Though the fossil record has large gaps, this overall picture is clear until the emergence of H. sapiens. He speculates multiple species were biologically equipped for the transformation into modern humans, but only one did and it was a cultural event which triggered the emergence of the symbol-using human. Memorably, he imagines children playing games who stumble onto the prospect of language, and that it quickly spread among a small H. sapiens population in Southwestern or Eastern Africa. It seems likely the development of language provided a comparative advantage in an ecologically demanding period and proved key to becoming the sole surviving species of hominid. And that perhaps is the most sobering fact of all: many (most?) genuses have multiple species, but modern hominids do not, we humans are the only surviving branch of the hominid family tree.//Multiple hominid species co-existing, with many evol dead ends. HS not the result of a continuous evol, most of the hominid species I knew of are not, in fact, our precursors but competing lineages which evidently lost out to HS. My mistaken idea propogated through paleontology until very recently.HS replaced all other hominid species: is this about humans better adapting to trying circumstances, or did we prevent other species from surviving by co-opting food supplies / shelter? some interbreeding possible, and perhaps early this exhange of genetic material was significant for eventual species; but not so for any crossbreeding that may (or not) have occurred between neanderthals and Cro-Magnon or humans.Omnivore vs herbivore / energy efficiency reqd due to brain demand for energy / cooking food / cannibalism as "gastronomic habit" not "acute necessity"Evol is now not relevant in same way due to pop sizeHominid species came onto scene and did what other species had done for hundreds of years, though perhaps better. Only latter manifested new technologies. A generalist approach to survival, adaptable.
    • 4/5
      Masters of the Planet attempts to determine at what point in history traits that would come to define homo sapiens appeared and developed. With a fossil record not nearly as complete as we'd like it to be as well as clues in geographically distant locations but far apart chronologically, there is still an awful lot of guesswork involved. Tattersall takes on a tour through the earliest hominids, from the first apes to stand and walk on two feet, to early branches of the hominid tree where our form and function began to take shape, to the neanderthals and the dominance of modern homo sapiens. We see the evidence, sketchy as it is, how and why hominids developed into omnivores. We not only see our brains grow, but why only certain areas matter. Finally, the difference maker is not so much physiological as it is intellectual. The difference between the brawnier, larger-brained neanderthal and Cro-magnon man was the ability to attach symbolic importance to objects in the world around them. This fueled further, faster brain development -- faster than in any other time over the course of our evolution. Now that humans have adapted to nearly every terrestrial ecosystem on the planet, the agents of change that steered the evolutionary train that led to us has pretty much derailed. Small changes might give important advantages in small populations and make a species more agile to environmental changes or in migrating to new niches. Those pressures no longer apply, and with 7 billion of us, it's unlikely that a new and improved man is going rise above the rest of us monkeys. However, that doesn't mean we still aren't evolving; the changes though won't be as outwardly apparent. Tattersall's writing style is a little dry. Stretches of Masters of the Planet can be tedious for those not already well-versed in the subject. I consider myself fairly well read on anthropology; there were some new things I learned to be sure, but I had to read carefully and think about the implications of what Tattersall wrote as he leaves most of his conclusions for the last few chapters (which I thought were the best written in the book).
    • 5/5
      This was a lovely overview of the state of our knowledge of human origins. Dr. Tattersall has summarized many intriguing findings spanning the range from the radiological evidence of the diet of our Australopithecine predecessors to the advent of symbolic thinking in our immediate forbearers. Personally, I would have been happy with greater technical focus, but this was an immensely readable telling. I recommend it without hesitation for the reader seeking a broad but intriguing account of our coming to be who we are as a species. The writing was quite up to the task. Bravo!
    • 5/5
      This sometimes surprising, always fascinating book on the history of human species examines the fossil record to explain what we know about the developmental path from the earliest ape-like hominids to the prehistory of our own Homo sapiens ancestors. For most of human existence several species co-existed, sometimes side-by-side. Why is there only us today? A lot goes into trying to answer that question, including what trait or traits characterize humanness, how early climate changes and population densities affected the speed of evolutionary adaptations, why technological advances sometimes come significantly after the structural changes that make them possible, and how early, less helpful theories of pioneering paleontologists are proving hard to shake. Central to the book is the determination of when and how humans became capable of symbolic reasoning, an adaptation author Ian Tattersall thinks may answer the question of why we are today the only humans on the planet. Did Neanderthals have that ability? It’s still a contentious issue, but based on the evidence author Ian Tattersall thinks not. The title Masters of the Planet is, I think, at least somewhat tongue in cheek. While it’s true that we Homo sapiens are the only humans left and that we are having an increasing impact on the planet, our tendency to be shortsighted is doing us no favors. Still, throughout human history we have proved to be masterful innovators, Tattersall documents this trait in us and our ancestors again and again, and that ability gives Tattersall hope for our future.This book was provided to me by the publisher with no review obligation, and the viewpoints are all mine.
    • 4/5
      Having read and enjoyed Ian Tattersall's earlier work The Fossil Trail for a college class several years ago, I was delighted to see his latest, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). The two works cover much the same ground; Tattersall offers an overview of recent research into the evolutionary history of hominid species, highlighting the latest finds and discoveries of fossilized hominid remains, tools, &c.A couple things that struck me about this book: first, how much of the hominid record is still uncertain at best. Tattersall quite frequently has to add qualifiers to his statements since they're based on the very small bits of data that have been discovered and studied so far. Along the same lines, he pillows many assertions with the note that not all scholars agree with this interpretation or that. It was refreshing, actually, to see how much of all this isn't settled science, and how the discovery of a single fossil might put a whole new light on things (as the discovery of Homo floresiensis a few years ago did).I'm glad I read this book fairly close on the heels of E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth. While Tattersall doesn't get into the evolution of social behavior, his other conclusions generally seem to jive with Wilson's fairly closely, but Tattersall is able to explore at greater depth some of the specific early hominid fossil sites, and to offer additional anatomic and taxonomic details about the species he discusses. I'd actually like to see a conversation between Tattersall and Wilson about whether they see things differently ... wouldn't that be something?Packed with detail, but quite readable, and supplemented with a long list of sources should you find yourself interested in a particular topic.