Written by Greg Morter and Niamh Brennan.Everyone has a story that tells us who they are, where they come from and how they came to be. Cultures, too, have their stories. Many of these we know as myths, as ancient ways of explaining how our world and its creatures came into existence. Throughout history, each cultural group has had a creation story or myth. These stories, all down the ages, have acted as guides by which a person could navigate through life's uncertainties and diffi...

New York Times bestseller • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • One of the Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year“It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” —David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal"It has my vote for science book of the year.” —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

The national bestseller that reveals how we are descended from seven prehistoric women.One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix, The Seven Daughters of Eve reveals the remarkable story behind a groundbreaking scientific discovery. After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Bryan Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a Europe...

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 wis...

One of the world’s great primatologists and a renowned expert on social behavior in apes presents the provocative idea that our noblest qualities—generosity, kindness, altruism—are as much a part of our nature as our baser instincts.As genetically similar to man as the chimpanzee, the bonobo has a temperament and a lifestyle vastly different from those of its genetic cousin. Where chimps are aggressive, territorial, and hierarchical, bonobos are gentle and loving.

In this Very Short Introduction, Prof Lord John Krebs provides a brief history of human food, from our remote ancestors 3 million years ago to the present day. By looking at the four great transitions in human food - cooking, agriculture, processing, and preservation - he considers a variety of questions, including why people like some kinds of foods and not others; how your senses contribute to flavour; the role of genetics in our likes and dislikes; and the differences in learni...

In this lively and controversial book Elaine Morgan presents a challenging interpretation to the question of human evolution. With brilliant logic she argues that our hominid ancestors began to evolve in response to an aquatic environment.Millions of years ago something happened that caused our ancestors to walk on two legs, to lose their fur, to develop larger brains and learn how to speak. Elaine Morgan discovers what this event was by studying the many incongruous flaws in the ph...

Charles Darwin thought he would be a clergyman after an uneventful childhood, where he hated school but loved the natural world. All that would change when he was allowed to be a part of a worldwide expedition to faraway lands. He was able to collect specimens and keep notes on all he experienced.Discover a plethora of topics such asEarly Life and EducationRound the World Aboard the BeagleDarwin's Evolutionary TheoryLife ...

The Unpredictable Species argues that the human brain evolved in a way that enhances our cognitive flexibility and capacity for innovation and imitation. In doing so, the book challenges the central claim of evolutionary psychology that we are locked into predictable patterns of behavior that were fixed by genes, and refutes the claim that language is innate. Philip Lieberman builds his case with evidence from neuroscience, genetics, and physical anthropology, showing how our basa...

Does God exist? This question simply will not go away-and science itself is providing the answer. Ariel A. Roth, scientist and Christian believer, examines key issues related to the "God question."

Keith Harrison has a PhD in zoology from the University of Nottingham. He is a former Senior Scientific Officer at the Natural History Museum in London and a former programme manager for the UK's Natural Environment Research Council. A Fellow of the Institute of Biology, the Geological Society of London and the Linnean Society of London, Keith's fieldwork has taken him to East Africa and South America, and he has published numerous scientific articles about invertebrate and vertebrate anim...

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex - Fully Illustrated Edition. is a book on evolutionary theory by Charles Darwin, It was Darwin's second book on evolutionary theory, following his work, On the Origin of Species, in which he explored the concept of natural selection. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies evolutionary theory to human evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biological adaptation distinct from, yet interconnected with, natur...