Author: Donald Johanson

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13:

"Between 6 and 7 million years ago, Earth experienced a global cooling period, which resulted in a drier climate in many areas of the world. In East Africa, what had been heavily wooded forest began to change over to savannah grasslands. Animals that had adapted to the dense forests encountered new challenges and had to adapt to more open environments among them one or more populations of relatively large apes." "Different animals adopted various strategies to survive in this new environment. At least one population of apes did what no other animal had done before (or since, which was to stand up and routinely move about on two legs." "This revolution in behavior will probably never by fully explained. Compared to walking on four legs, bipedal locomotion is slow, clumsy, energetically inefficient, and fraught with opportunities for injury. Yet, being upright endowed these apes with certain advantages, such as enhanced visibility and better thermoregulation. Certainly the ability to habitually walk on two legs freed their hands to carry food and manipulate stones and other objects in the environment, an ability that looms large in the evolution of humans. Whatever the reasons, this unparalleled evolutionary innovation conveyed significant adaptive advantage to these creatures. And with this advantage, succeed these bipedal apes certainly did." "By 2 million years ago they began to surge out of Africa, north into Europe and east into the Near East, China, and beyond into the Indonesian archipelago." "As the archaeological evidence of their technologically advanced tools and luminous cave paintings demonstrates, they brought with them the beginnings of modern human culture - language, art, religion, and science." "Today we are the sole and last representative of that group of apes who, in standing up on two legs for the first time, began the amazing evolutionary journey described in From Lucy to Language. The deepest message of this story, and thus of this book, is that we, like all other creatures large and small, are of this Earth. Yes, we are the most intelligent and most cooperative of all animals that have ever existed but also the most dangerous. We must realize that we are not the final product of evolution on Earth. Our species, like all others, is an evolutionary work in progress. Earth is our birthplace and our home. We must use the great powers with which evolution has endowed us to respect and nurture Earth, for despite our technological hubris, life on Earth will go on with or without us."--BOOK JACKET.