The 10,000 Year Explosion - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The 10,000 Year Explosion write by Gregory Cochran. This book was released on 2009. The 10,000 Year Explosion available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Two leading researchers make the controversial argument that the human species is still measurably evolving in important ways--in fact, faster than ever before.
The 10,000 Year Explosion
The 10,000 Year Explosion - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The 10,000 Year Explosion write by Gregory Cochran. This book was released on 2009-01-27. The 10,000 Year Explosion available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Resistance to malaria. Blue eyes. Lactose tolerance. What do all of these traits have in common? Every one of them has emerged in the last 10,000 years. Scientists have long believed that the "great leap forward" that occurred some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe marked end of significant biological evolution in humans. In this stunningly original account of our evolutionary history, top scholars Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending reject this conventional wisdom and reveal that the human species has undergone a storm of genetic change much more recently. Human evolution in fact accelerated after civilization arose, they contend, and these ongoing changes have played a pivotal role in human history. They argue that biology explains the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, the European conquest of the Americas, and European Jews' rise to intellectual prominence. In each of these cases, the key was recent genetic change: adult milk tolerance in the early Indo-Europeans that allowed for a new way of life, increased disease resistance among the Europeans settling America, and new versions of neurological genes among European Jews. Ranging across subjects as diverse as human domestication, Neanderthal hybridization, and IQ tests, Cochran and Harpending's analysis demonstrates convincingly that human genetics have changed and can continue to change much more rapidly than scientists have previously believed. A provocative and fascinating new look at human evolution that turns conventional wisdom on its head, The 10,000 Year Explosion reveals the ongoing interplay between culture and biology in the making of the human race.
Race
Race - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Race write by Vincent Sarich. This book was released on 2005-08-19. Race available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Arguing that race is a biologically significant difference, the authors challenge the weight of academic opinion on the subject and suggest honesty rather than fear-mongering in light of growing evidence that the various races are significantly different. 20,000 first printing.
Last Ape Standing
Last Ape Standing - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Last Ape Standing write by Chip Walter. This book was released on 2013-01-29. Last Ape Standing available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Over the past 150 years scientists have discovered evidence that at least twenty-seven species of humans evolved on planet Earth. These weren't simply variations on apes, but upright-walking humans who lived side by side, competing, cooperating, sometimes even mating with our direct ancestors. Why did the line of ancient humans who eventually evolved into us survive when the others were shown the evolutionary door? Chip Walter draws on new scientific discoveries to tell the fascinating tale of how our survival was linked to our ancestors being born more prematurely than others, having uniquely long and rich childhoods, evolving a new kind of mind that made us resourceful and emotionally complex; how our highly social nature increased our odds of survival; and why we became self aware in ways that no other animal seems to be. Last Ape Standing also profiles the mysterious "others" who evolved with us-the Neanderthals of Europe, the "Hobbits" of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia and the just-discovered Red Deer Cave people of China who died off a mere eleven thousand years ago. Last Ape Standing is evocative science writing at its best-a witty, engaging and accessible story that explores the evolutionary events that molded us into the remarkably unique creatures we are; an investigation of why we do, feel, and think the things we do as a species, and as people-good and bad, ingenious and cunning, heroic and conflicted.
The Big Ratchet
The Big Ratchet - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Big Ratchet write by Ruth DeFries. This book was released on 2014-09-09. The Big Ratchet available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. How an ordinary mammal manipulated nature to become technologically sophisticated city-dwellers -- and why our history points to an optimistic future in the face of environmental crisis Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened, of the ratchets -- the technologies and innovations, big and small -- that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. The Big Ratchet itself came in the twentieth century, when a range of technologies -- from fossil fuels to scientific plant breeding to nitrogen fertilizers -- combined to nearly quadruple our population in a century, and to grow our food supply even faster. To some, these technologies are a sign of our greatness; to others, of our hubris. MacArthur fellow and Columbia University professor Ruth DeFries argues that the debate is the wrong one to have. Limits do exist, but every limit that has confronted us, we have surpassed. That cycle of crisis and growth is the story of our history; indeed, it is the essence of The Big Ratchet. Understanding it will reveal not just how we reached this point in our history, but how we might survive it.
