The Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human Evolution [Kindle Edition] Author: Clive Finlayson | Language: English | ISBN:
B00I7TR8M4 | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human Evolution
Download electronic versions of selected books The Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human Evolution for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link In this fresh and provocative view of a seven-million-year evolutionary journey, Finlayson demonstrates the radical implications for the interpretation of fossils and technologies and shows that understanding humans within an ecological context provides insights into the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens worldwide. Finlayson argues that environmental change, particularly availability of water, played a critical role in shaping the direction of human evolution, contributing to our
spread and success. He argues that our ancestors carved a niche for themselves by leaving the forest and forcing their way into a long-established community of carnivores in a tropical savannah as climate changes opened up the landscape. They took their chance at high noon, when most other predators were
asleep. Adapting to this new lifestyle by shedding their hair and developing an active sweating system to keep cool, being close to fresh water was vital. As the climate dried, our ancestors, already bipedal, became taller and slimmer, more adept at travelling farther in search of water. The challenges of seeking water in a drying landscape moulded the minds and bodies of early humans, and directed their migrations and eventual settlements.
In this fresh and provocative view of a seven-million-year evolutionary journey, Finlayson demonstrates the radical implications for the interpretation of fossils and technologies and shows that understanding humans within an ecological context provides insights into the emergence and spread of Homo sapiens sapiens worldwide. Books with free ebook downloads available The Improbable Primate: How Water Shaped Human Evolution [Kindle Edition]
- File Size: 1241 KB
- Print Length: 221 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 019965879X
- Publisher: OUP Oxford (February 10, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I7TR8M4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,642 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #53 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Genetics
- #59 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Civil & Environmental > Environmental > Water Quality & Treatment
This very short book (ca. 60,000 words of text) argues that humans are fond of water, and naturally gravitate to and flourish best in environments with a lot of water--more specifically, in landscapes of "trees/open-spaces/water." There are many reasons to argue for this. The distribution of human fossils is the most clear and direct: from Australopithecines on, they are in riparian and lake and shore environments. This, however, is partially a reflection of where fossilization is likely to happen, i.e. in places where alluvium covers dead bodies fairly quickly. But there is more: the human ability to cool by copious sweating, and thus our enormous requirement for drinking water in hot climates; our hairlessness (partly because of the sweating); our need to bathe a lot, again because of the sweating--without bathing we are prone to skin diseases; and, perhaps most important, our need for large amounts of high-nutrient food, to run our big bodies and big brains. (The human nervous system requires 400 calories a day--as much as a big dog needs). So, though not really "aquatic apes," we need a lot of water. Our fondness for a mosaic of trees and open spaces is related to that high food need. Ecological edges have lots of food.
Dr. Finlayson could have done a good deal more with this. He points out we are "rain-chasers, but only in the broad sense that we need a fairly well-watered environment. Adoph Portmann pointed out 50 years ago that we are literal rain-chasers (and Finlayson makes that point for modern Australian aborigines): we go to where rain has fallen, because there is more food there. Dr. Finlayson also briefly mentions fire, but only as an opener-up of forest.
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