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How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
by Gaia Vince
How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny.
What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond.
Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.
"The author draws on extensive travels and many interviews with scientists to offer vivid accounts of [the] forces at work in the lives of our 'cultural forebears.' A provocative, highly readable take on our astonishing emergence from the primordial soup." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Even those broadly familiar with humanity's story will find new information and insights in Vince's fascinating study." - Publishers Weekly
"A wondrous, visionary work." - Tim Flannery, scientist and author of The Weather Makers
"An imaginative and inspiring adventure into the origins and evolution of what we hold most dear: our human culture." - Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development UCL
"This book goes from the Big Bang to the Hundred Thousand Genome Project to make a convincing case that Homo sapiens has become a super-organism. I learned a lot from it and so will you." - Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics UCL and author of Here Comes the Sun
"Transcendence is a beautifully imaginative overview of the biological and cultural evolution of humans. Richly informed by the latest research, Vince's colorful survey fizzes like a zip-wire as it tours our species' story from the Big Bang to the coming age of hyper-cooperation." - Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University and author of The Goodness Paradox
This information about Transcendence was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster. In 2015, she was the first woman to win the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and writes for Science, the Guardian, and others. She lives in London.
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