Download The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution AudioBook Free
The thought of a missing link between humanity and our pet ancestors predates development and popular knowledge and also has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the modern day creativity, and new fossil discoveries tend to be hailed in headlines as disclosing the elusive transitional step, as soon as when we ceased being "animal" and started out being "human". In The Accidental Types, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Character, takes aim at this deceptive notion, arguing which it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how development works and, when put on the development of our very own species, facilitates mistaken ideas about our very own put in place the universe. Gee reveals a powerful and stark task to our propensity to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Definately not being truly a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human being exceptionalism, Gee argues, can be an problem that also infects methodical thought. Touring the many features of humans that contain recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the pet world, Gee shows that our evolutionary results is one possibility among many, the one which owes more to chance than to the organized progression to supremacy. He starts off with bipedality, which he shows can have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, words, and, finally, sentience. He shows each one of these capabilities to be alive and well throughout the animal world - they are not, indeed, unique to our types. The Accidental Types combines Gee's firsthand experience on the editorial area of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to make a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution - the key is not what's lacking, but how we're connected.
