50,000 years ago – merely a blip in evolutionary time – our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their own precursors had been doing for millions of years. Yet something about our species separated it from the pack, and led to its survival while the rest became extinct. So just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become Masters of the Planet? Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, Ian Tattersall takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long term evolutionary refinement. Instead it emerged quickly, shocking their world and changing it forever.
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Review
“Quietly magnificent”—The Atlantic, runner-up for the best book of 2012
“Fantastically interesting…Tattersall has been involved in many of the past half-century’s advances in understanding human evolution…Essential.”—Choice, a 2013 outstanding title
“An authoritative snapshot of the ongoing struggle to understand our evolutionary past.”—Financial Times
"A guide for the perplexed student of human origins ... Tattersall weaves a history of palaeoanthropology into the text, showing that though fossils may provide the bulk of the evidence for human origins, few of the details are set in stone."--New Scientist
"Tattersall is no slouch in the storytelling department, but his narrative emphasizes the necessarily fragmentary nature of the fossil record and the provisional nature of what we can safely conclude from it ...[His] account highlights the major advances in paleoanthropology that have been made in the last decade or two."--Natural History magazine
"An efficient survey of 7 million years of evolutionary development and two centuries of evolutionary thought ... In deft combinations of authority and caution, expertise and wit, Tattersall invites the lay reader to the party. Throughout, he remains grounded in the salient details culled from archaeology, anatomy, genetics, primatology, nutrition and social science." - The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Asuperb overview of how our species developed (a long process) and how we grew smart enough to dominate the planet ... Keeping a critical eye on the evidence and a skeptical one on theories, Tattersall confirms his status among world anthropologists by delivering a superior popular explanation of human origins." - Kirkus Reviews starred review
"A concise history of how humans became humans ... Tattersall moves through the complex fossil records effortlessly and with a welcome sense of wonder. He also consistently conveys a deep knowledge of his subject ... Tattersall's combination of erudition and a conversational style make this is an excellent primer on human evolution." -Publishers Weekly
"This is a book I will be recommending to anyone who wants a good overview of evolution. This book puts the new discoveries in their proper sequence and perspective. It is an excellent work." - Jean Auel, author of The Clan of the Cave Bear, and the rest of Earth's Children books
"We all think we know the story: first we evolved to walk upright, then use tools, then agriculture, language, and us - - an inexorable linear progression from ape to human. But Ian Tattersall introduces us to several different human-like precursors, all alive at the same time, as recently as 50,000 years ago - just barely before the period we humans chauvinistically refer to as 'history'. So it's no longer straightforward: beasts like us emerged several times within the past hundred thousand years, some of them distinct species. Some were the first to think like we do: in symbols and abstractions; those were our forebears. But while they were alive, these multiple different humanoids may have known about each other; interacted; fought; lived together or apart; possibly even bred. It turns out that our lineage is anything but linear; Tattersall demolishes the versions we were once taught, and lays out the remarkable new history of our diverse origins for the first time." - Richard Granger, author of Big Brain
"Are you ready for a 3.5 billion year stroll down the path of life's origins to the present. Ian Tattersall takes you by the hand and covers the highlights like few are capable of doing. The continuities and discontinuities reveal insights on why we humans are the masters of the planet. A must read." - Mike Gazzaniga, author of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique
"This [book] is excellent ... Among other things, and very importantly, it is a very good read." - Colin Tudge, author of The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor
"For almost 40 years, Ian Tattersall has been one of our leaders in the field of human evolution. Mastersof the Planet is a stunning culmination of a career in science: a brilliant and engaging account that illuminates and inspires. Read Tattersall and you will not see yourself, let alone our entire species, in the same way again." - Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish
"This is a book full of wisdom: the distillation of a lifetime's experience combined with finely honed critical faculties. Tattersall is a captivating and surefooted guide through the ranks of hominids, over several million years, in search of the origins of our uniquely symbolic mind. He ranges widely across evidence from DNA sequences and molecular forensics to skeletal morphology and ancient artifacts, never shirking the telling detail, never lacking a finely judged opinion, yet always making the science beautifully clear. The best guide to human origins that I have read." - Nick Lane, author of Life Ascending and Oxygen
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In the early chapters of Masters of the Planet Tattersall introduces the reader to the practice of paleoanthropology, its essential vocabulary, and the state of the science. The reader gets just enough information about early hominid cranial shapes, dental wear patterns, skeletal variations, tool use, and geochronology as is absolutely necessary. We visit Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa as fossils and their strata are carefully unearthed, dated, and interpreted. We learn about early hominids' toolkits, their social lives, and survival mechanisms. We also get a refresher on genetics and geology.
It is only in the last thirty thousand years of the two and a half million year panorama of successive hominid speciation and extinction that our use of symbolism is unequivocally documented. It is only when cave art appears at Chauvet, Lascaux, and Altamira that we are entirely satisfied that our ancestors have become as cognitive as we. This transition, Tattersall points out, would be utterly unbelievable if it had not actually happened. For the first hundred thousand years of our species' existence we were unaware of our brain's latent capacity for symbolism.
When such new applications for already evolved anatomical features are introduced they are called "exaptations." Tattersall suggests that human exceptionalism is the result of one particular exaptation, the use of our brains (specifically the angular gyrus) for symbolic thought. That symbolism leveraged our tool kit, empowered us with language, and made us Masters of the Planet. Tattersall's thoughtful "Coda" entreats responsibility in our custodianship of that planet, now that we are its masters.
Ian Tattersall, author of "Masters of the Planet", is curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He brings to the issues a lifetime of expertise in hominid evolution, as well as abundant experience in writing books and articles for fellow scientists and general audiences. The book is organized historically, and traces the diverse and complicated history of hominids over the past 7-8 million years. Beginning with the ancient origins of the hominid lineage, it outlines the rise of bipedal apes, the variety of australopiths (including "Lucy"), life on the savannah, emergence from Africa (an event that occurred multiple times), the spread of early "Homo" throughout the Old World continents, the enigmatic Neandertals (distant cousins to ourselves, not ancestors - except to the degree in which we interbred), and ultimately, the arrival of modern "H. sapiens. " The book does not focus entirely on skeletal features. Rather, such aspects as development of social behavior, running ability, loss of body hair, diet, use of fire, and cooking all get their due. Tattersall's account leads towards recognition of the distinctiveness of our species, as manifested by language as well as symbolic behavior, features that he considers to be responsible for our species' success.
In tracing hominid diversity and evolutionary history, Tattersall draws on contemporary technological analyses to reveal details that would have been unimaginable a decade or so ago. Thus, readers may be surprised to find what isotope analyses have revealed about diets of early hominids, and what genetic analyses have shown about skin and hair color in Neandertals. Tattersall does not shy from recognizing unresolved issues and persistent controversies. He fairly presents alternative viewpoints, and freely acknowledges areas where a scarcity of evidence has rendered divergent interpretations viable.
As one who has read many books on hominid evolution, I found Tattersall's work to be interesting and informative. My copy is now replete with penciled comments and bent- down page corners to mark fascinating issues and controversial matters. While the book's dealings with uniqueness of our own species' overlaps that of Brian Fagan's recent "Cro-Magnon," I found Tattersall's account preferable in some respects. The latter recognizes the emergence of artistic expression (starting at least 70,000 years ago) as a worldwide phenomenon rather than one local to Europe and Asia, in accord with its status as a species characteristic.
Notwithstanding my high regard for this book, it is not free of error. The hyoid apparatus is not a "bony portion of the Adam's apple" (as stated on page 36). Rather, the hyoid consists of thin cartilages that support the tongue and its musculature, while the so-called Adam's apple is the larynx. (How the two could be confused by a paleo-anatomist is most puzzling). "Exaptation" is wrongly presented as a non- adaptationist mechanism (pages 44, 68, and 210), in which features arise by chance and only later evolve to take on a function. Evolutionary biologists will recognize this characterization as mistaken. In exaptation, features that are evolutionary adapted to serve one function are transformed through natural selection to serve some new function (as outlined in Gould and Vrba's original 1982 paper in Paleobiology and throughout the modern literature). As another example, the author suggests that "members of the genus "Homo" have been consistently predisposed in the same way towards brain size increase"(page 132) since brain enlargement occurred in three separate lineages. However, one need not infer any special mechanism or attribute unique to our genus. A trend towards brain enlargement has occurred independently in many mammalian lineages, as well as in numerous linages of birds and cartilaginous fishes, and even among molluscs and arthropods. In this respect, hominids appear (with aquatic mammals) as an extreme example of a widespread evolutionary trend.
Some interpretations in the book are quite speculative, leading to weak inferences. For example, discovery of one toothless male skull (the Dmanisi specimen) is taken as evidence for long- term compassionate behavior among "Homo erectus" era hominids, on the grounds that the individual would not have been able to chew his own food. (Page 124: "...it seems entirely reasonable to conclude that the Dmanisi hominids had the cognitive reserves to express their fellow- feeling in the form of material support"). In view of the profusion of other interpretations, the inference is unnecessarily speculative. One might also question the book's central claim that emergence of artistic expression in our species paralleled the development of a unique form of psychology, as manifested in our capacity for symbolic thought. Fossils reveal little about psychology, and how early symbolic thought arose arguably is entirely a matter of speculation - cave art and jewelry notwithstanding.
Such issues do not detract from a work that, on the whole, is one of the best modern accounts available; indeed, some of the above manifests the fascinating and thought - provoking nature of this book. Overall, I would strongly recommend "Masters of the Planet" as an interesting and informative account of the diversity and evolutionary history of the bipedal apes and we their descendants.
Tattersall is a seasoned and eminently reasonable guide, as well as a crystal-clear communicator in a field that can be technical and bewildering to the interested general reader and expert alike.
He is above all a sifter - sorting out the significant from the trivial among thousands of clues from fossil apes and humans, their predators and prey, petrified footprints, hi-tech reconstructions of past climates and ecologies, relevant recent studies of primate behavior and cognition, origin of language studies, and much more.
Eschewing a mere catalogue of stones and bones, Tattersall tackles head-on the questions about which we are most curious: Who performed the first known human burials? Where can we first see evidence of empathy and care for others, and its diametric opposite-- cannibalism? What were the similarities and differences in culture and behavior between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals? If several species of humans co-existed for thousands of years at the same times and places, how is it that only one now stands alone as "Masters of the Planet?"
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