The Dawn of Human Culture

by Richard G. Klein, Blake Edgar

A bold new theory on what sparked the "big bang" of human counsciousness

The abrupt emergence of human culture over a stunningly short period continues to be one of the great enigmas of human evolution. This compelling book introduces a bold new theory on this unsolved mystery. Author Richard Klein reexamines the archaeological evidence and brings in new discoveries in the study of the human brain. These studies detail the changes that enabled humans to think and behave in far more sophisticated ways than before, resulting in the incredibly rapid evolution of new skills. Richard Klein has been described as "the premier anthropologist in the country today" by Evolutionary Anthropology. Here, he and coauthor Blake Edgar shed new light on the full story of a truly fascinating period of evolution.

Richard G. Klein, PhD (Palo Alto, CA), is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of the definitive academic book on the subject of the origins of human culture, The Human Career. Blake Edgar (San Francisco, CA) is the coauthor of the very successful From Lucy to Language, with Dr. Donald Johanson. He has written extensively for Discover, GEO, and numerous other magazines.

Genres: History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Science, Evolution, Nonfiction, Prehistory

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very creditable and thorough overview of human prehistory, and the evolution of hominids from about 2.5 million years to about 50,000 BP. Richard G. Klein (Stanford University) covers in detail the state of affairs at the time of writing this book, now about 20 years ago. He does this based on the available archaeological material, with sometimes very technical explanations, resulting in nuanced considerations, with a summary of hypotheses, and the gaps in the research. State of the art, so to speak.

Only, in this sector, science is advancing at a very fast pace: through new archaeological finds, but above all through new methodological techniques, such as genetic research. Klein does cite the first results of this genetic research, but at that time this branch of science was only in its early stages. The fact that he states that there is little or no reason to believe that Neanderthals and Sapiens could interbreed and produce fertile offspring shows that this book is dated after all. For now, this is not the case with Klein’s boldest hypothesis, which is that the modern brain, which was capable of symbolic behavior and thus created 'culture', only emerged about 50,000 years ago, and probably was the result of a genetic mutation. As far as I know this has not been falsified yet, but whether it is ever going to be empirically proven, is another matter. On this, see my commentary in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

[Sense of History]

The hypothesis that the modern human species, Homo sapiens, made a significant cognitive leap in prehistoric times is not new. The first reference I came across about this was in Yuval Noah Harari's well-known/infamous Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2012). He speaks of a 'cognitive revolution' and situates it somewhere between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, with a very large bandwidth. Numerous other books similarly describe the ‘sudden’ emergence (sudden by prehistoric standards) of symbolic behavior in about the same period. Richard R. Klein does the same in this 'Dawn of Human Culture' (published in 2002) and for convenience puts the year 50,000 BP as the pivot.

Klein is no archaeologist, but a renowned anthropologist, and this book demonstrates his thorough knowledge of the deepest history of man. Quite detailed and sometimes very technical, he outlines the evolution that the different human species went through, starting about 2.5 million years ago. Especially the development in tool production is a guiding principle for him, even more than the anatomical evolution and the larger brain contents of the successive and intertwining human species. That's no coincidence, as Klein is clearly working towards a climax, with the emergence of all sorts of symbolic behavior, sometime after 50,000 BP. He thus relativizes the earlier archaeological finds, including those in the Kebara cave in Israel that are attributed to the Neanderthal and which, according to other researchers, point to a burial ritual, and thus to some form of belief in the survival of man after death. So, for Klein, there is only really consistent symbolic behavior and thus 'human culture' after 50,000 BP. It is to his credit that he also discusses the counter-arguments to this (including the very early developments in Australia), but at the same time refuting them.

In addition to dating and defining the cultural leap in human evolution, the explanation of the phenomenon is especially important. And here, at both the beginning and the end of this book, Klein invokes a hypothesis that he himself calls ‘circumstancial’: namely, a genetic mutation: “In our view, the simplest and most economic explanation for the ‘dawn’ is that it stemmed from a fortunate mutation that promoted the fully modern human brain." Klein is certainly not alone with this statement, Harari also cites it, although there are a lot of other archaeologists/anthropologists who give different explanations. One of the earliest and most imaginative is that of the British archaeologist Steven Mithen (see The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science, 1995) who sees modern human behavior as arising mainly from a long evolutionary history of the brain itself, in which various 'rooms' of the human brain gradually started to form more complex cross-connections and a cognitive whole was created with which a whole 'leap forward' could suddenly be taken. Somewhat related to this, the South African archaeologist David Lewis-Williams (Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods, 2005) looked at it from a neurological perspective, where the cognitive jump was allegedly triggered by neuro-psychological processes that caused a change in consciousness. A very different view can be heard with Robin Dunbar and Clive Gamble (Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind, 2014); they focus on the increasing social interaction within and between human communities, which, partly through the use of language, has repeatedly led to leaps and bounds in the cultural evolution of man.

It is clear that the scientific debate is still ongoing, and that is normal and even healthy. The most plausible explanation is probably a complex interlocking number of factors, that is biological, neurological, demographic, social and genetic, that triggered and reinforced each other. Klein also seems to think in that direction, although according to him the genetic jump, through a mutation, is the decisive explanation. We may never know the correct answer, but recent evolution in paleogenetics may provide a solution in the near future. Analyzing ancient DNA could lead to determining a little more precisely when a particular mutation led to such a change that cultural interaction became much more decisive for the evolution of the human than the anatomical or physiological evolution. But even then, it may be advisable to take several factors into account at the same time. Human history, and evolution in general, can never be reduced to one simple explanation, that should be clear by now. Challenging and frustrating perhaps, but by all means fascinating.

[Iset · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to stress that the rating I give this book isn’t because it’s a crackpot fringe idea, or poorly written. Indeed, Klein’s book is none of those things. His proposition is favoured by a section of professional archaeologists, and the book itself is both well-written, notable in fact for its clarity of presentation, I thought. But I do disagree with its conclusions, and it is important to note that it was published in 2002 and at current date of writing this review in 2017, it is now rather outdated (Klein’s book, for example, does not know about the existence of homo floriensis, the Denisovans, and argues against the interbreeding of Neanderthals and homo sapiens, which we now know occurred).

Klein’s hypothesis is that homo sapiens in Africa experienced a neural and behavioural change around 50,000 BCE that fuelled a creative revolution as well as prompting modern humans to spread out across the globe. As I said, this hypothesis is accepted by some in the archaeological community, as a reasonable explanation for the likes of those lavish European cave paintings; art the likes of which doesn’t seem to be known prior to that. However, a significant proportion of archaeologists do not accept the hypothesis. Some, as Klein himself mentions in his book, think that instead of a neural change the change was simply technological, social, or demographic – nothing whatsoever to do with a change in the brain itself. Others doubt there really was much of a change at all. I count myself among the latter group.

Why do I doubt Klein’s postulation? For starters, Klein himself admits the evidence is circumstantial; brains of homo sapiens before and after the key dates just do not survive, and even if they did, much of how the human brain works exactly is still a mystery to us. Klein is basing his hypothesis on the premise that a creative cultural explosion of sorts happened after 50,000 BCE, and if there was a drastic change then something must have caused it. Klein states that the simplest explanation in his view is a neural change. However, the premise itself may be faulty – there may have been no sudden outpouring of creativity, but rather our creative natures could just as easily be linked to the evolution of homo sapiens c. 200,000 BCE. Human sites earlier than 50,000 BCE are comparatively few in number due to the difficulty in such ancient materials being preserved, and in addition Europe (first entered by modern humans c. 45,000 BCE) has received a lot more attention since the advent of archaeology than Africa has (for reasons tied up with education and colonialism). I consider it quite possible that wonderful discoveries of palaeolithic art older than that in Europe just hasn’t been found yet. Of particular note, and Klein himself acknowledges this, is that there is no detectable anatomical change whatsoever between humans living after 50,000 BCE, and humans living before 50,000 BCE.

In addition, and this is where the book’s outdatedness really starts to make its hypothesis look shaky, discoveries made in the last 15 years offer evidence that would seem to directly contradict Klein’s proposition. The Blombos engravings offer an example of art from Africa that come from a stratum sequence that has been dated to between 70,000 and 100,000 BCE. Work by Malaysian archaeologists has discovered tools from the Kota Tampan culture lying in the volcanic ash layer from the eruption of Toba c. 74,000 BCE. Discoveries in Australia of homo sapiens could potentially be as early as 68,000 BCE. Most convincingly is the work that has been done in palaeogenetics by the likes of Stephen Oppenheimer. The rate of mutation of our DNA can be used to create a bracket of when certain traits emerged, as well as tracing the movement of populations across the globe – in short; when we arrived somewhere and where we came from before that. The archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that modern humans first left Africa around 120,000 BCE, albeit unsuccessfully (the population appears to have died out); and, crucially, that all lines descending from the Out of Africa mother that all non-Africans today are descended from dates to c. 83,000 BCE.

Oppenheimer’s book, Out of Africa, in my opinion, really thoroughly and intensively addresses these questions for anyone interested in just how modern humans spread across the globe, and he even directly addresses Klein’s proposition, and this is worth quoting at length:

"Rather than accept the obvious – that human culture feeds into itself, thus generating its own accelerating tempo – many anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists believe that something ‘genetic’ happened to the way our brains worked within the last 100,000 years, producing a different kind of human brain with new wiring. Some go even further, suggesting that language is the most obvious candidate for that new and unique behaviour. Frankly, I think this is perverse logic and un-Darwinian. Deliberate coded communication, or ‘language’, is certainly a useful, new, and unique behaviour. How much simpler, though, if this was what had differentiated our early ancestors from other large savannah primates and had driven evolution of their brain size 2.5 million years earlier so that they could communicate better and cope with their worsening environment in a more inventive way... The European Upper Palaeolithic has been glorified as the ‘human revolution’, with dramatic cognitive advances such as abstract thought and speech. Often explicit in this scenario is the concept of a biological advance: the idea that a genetically determined change – a thought or speech gene – somehow brought about the Upper Palaeolithic revolution in Europe. Many of the most dramatic innovations of the modern newcomers were, however, just that: new inventions that had a clear regional and chronological beginning long after our species’ emergence...

Chicago palaeoanthropologist Richard Klein, takes this cultural explosion a stage further and interpret it as a human biological epiphany. In a standard text, The Human Career, written in 1989, he states: ‘it can be argued that the Upper Paleolithic signals the most fundamental change in human behavior that the archeological record may ever reveal . . . The strong correlation between Upper Paleolithic artifacts and modern human remains further suggests that it was the modern human physical type that made the Upper Paleolithic (and all subsequent cultural developments) possible. The question then arises whether there is a detectable link between the evolution of modern people and the development of those behavioral traits that mark the Upper Paleolithic.’ He then draws attention to the mainly Middle Palaeolithic tools of earlier modern humans, concluding: ‘In sum, anatomical and behavioral modernity may have appeared simultaneously in Europe, but in both the Near East and Africa, anatomical modernity antedates behavioral modernity, at least as it is detectable in the archeological record. This observation is difficult to explain. Perhaps . . . the earliest anatomically modern humans of Africa and the Near East were not as modern as their skeletons suggest. Neurologically, they may have lacked the fully modern capacity for culture. This may have appeared only as recently as 40,000 to 50,000 years ago when it allowed [what were by] then fully modern humans to spread rapidly throughout the world.’...

This model was conceived before 1989, at a time when it was believed that Australia was colonized only 40,000 years ago. In other words, Klein could interpret the evidence to allow for Australia – and hence also Asia – to have been colonized by Anatomically Modern Humans only after the start of the European Upper Palaeolithic. This made it possible for him to argue that these new ‘neurally enhanced’ moderns in Europe could have then moved on to colonize the rest of the non-African world. Klein published a second edition of his book in 1999, by which time he acknowledged, on the last couple of pages, the problem of possible earlier Australian (and Asian) colonization by 60,000 years ago, and the possibility of harpoon fishing in Africa between 90,000 and 155,000 years ago. In his conclusions he still, however, returns to the argument of a neurological evolutionary (i.e. genetically driven) revolution in Europe 40,000–60,000 years ago.

Even before we consider the evidence, we can see that this argument implies a biologically deterministic approach to cultural evolution. It assumes that each cultural advance is determined or ‘allowed’ by a genetic change. As I mentioned in the Prologue, human (or other primate) culture is first invented, then learnt and added to from generation to generation. Each advance or skill does not come out of a new gene. Rather, new behaviours come first and the genetic modifications that best exploit those new behaviours come afterwards. In other words, the change of culture precedes the change of body – not the other way round. Furthermore, there are predictable geographical differences of culture. If a particular invention in one region led to other local inventions, the accelerated pace of innovation would give that region a head start. So regional differences in the rate of cultural progression should be expected, even within one human species.

There are several inescapable logical assumptions in Klein’s argument that fully ‘neurally modern’ humans appeared only after 40,000–50,000 years ago. First there is the explicit implication that early African moderns were biologically less than modern – in other words, they did not have the neurological capacity to develop modern behaviours. This strange conclusion would inevitably apply to those moderns left in Africa, and also to the first moderns migrating into Asia and on to Australia, since it is now generally accepted that these colonizations took place quite some time before 50,000 years ago (the earliest possible time for which the Upper Palaeolithic can be identified in the Eastern Mediterranean). What do these hypothetical conclusions mean? They would mean first that the direct ancestors of today’s Africans living between 50,000 and 130,000 years ago were biologically incapable of developing or using Upper Palaeolithic behaviour and technology. They would not be able to paint, carve, trade, organize, and so forth. Many say that they could not speak – or, if they could, that their speech was ‘primitive’. With such disadvantages, presumably they could not, given the opportunity, drive cars or fly planes; compose and play soul, spirituals, reggae, classical music, and jazz; or become doctors, financiers, and geneticists. The mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome trees imply that today’s Africans are descended mainly from lines present before 50,000 years ago and not from lines outside Africa. So, why can today’s African descendants do all these things their ancestors were supposedly genetically incapable of?

There is a further logical problem. If Europeans were the first biologically modern humans and were isolated comparative latecomers, what about the rest of the world? How did they catch up? All living modern humans are fully ‘Anatomically Modern’, and we can trace back our genetic trail to a small ancestral group that started branching in Africa around 190,000 years ago. At no point after that did the total modern population number less than a thousand, so we have to imagine that one group inevitably led, by expansion and branching, to many groups… So if there really was, say, a ‘painting mutation’ or a ‘speech mutation’, only those descended from the individual who developed that mutation should inherit the skill. So, if the ‘behaviourally fully modern’ cluster of mutations initially evolved locally in Europeans 40,000–50,000 years ago, then the rest of the colonized world – the Asians, Africans, and Australians – would not be able to paint, carve, speak, make blades, or place a bet on a horse. Nor would their modern descendants. This is clearly absurd, for they can do all those things."

In this book, Klein has clearly amended his hypothesis - he now believes that the neurological change took place in Africa before the out of Africa event, and this tackles the rather glaring holes in the previous version of his hypothesis. But this still cannot explain the evidence of homo sapiens before 50,000 BCE, the evidence of art prior to that date, the lack of any anatomical change, or the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that culture is allowed by genetic change, and rather the evidence in fact points in the opposite direction, that cultural behaviour fuels genetic change. I have to say I agree with Oppenheimer. A well presented book, but rather outdated now, and for me, too many holes to be a convincing hypothesis.

5 out of 10

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of humankind from the earliest species up to more advanced humans and the beginning of agriculture. The book begins by talking about the bipedal ape fossils that have been found and their slow evolution into more human like form 7 million years ago. Then about the evidence of the first stone tools that appeared about 3 million years ago. The first recognizable humans are dated back 1.8 million years ago. The first evidence of migration out of Africa is about 1 million years ago, although there is some possible evidence of a human species in Java 2 million years ago. Larger braincases began appearing about 600,000 years ago. The first evidence of Neanderthals in Europe dates back 500,000 years ago and during this same period modern humans were evolving in Africa. The book then begins discussions about several significant discoveries of tools and artwork that have been discovered and the dates of those discoveries. The last quarter of the book goes into a fairly extensive discussion of Neanderthals and then on to Cro-Magnon as their successors. Eventually it briefly discusses modern humans and the beginning of culture and agriculture.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neither "bold" nor "new," but excellent nonetheless

Professor Klein and science editor Blake Edgar refer to "innovation" as the key to the great leap forward made by humans about 50,000 years ago. This was the beginning of human culture--the "dawn" as they call it. It wasn't a change in physiology--humans have been anatomically modern for something like 150,000 years. What changed was the wiring in the brain, or the chemistry in the brain or the linkage between the modules in the brain, or, as they express it, there was a "neurological shift"--at any rate, something that would never show up in a fossil.

This is Klein's theory and it is a persuasive one, albeit one that can never be proven--well, probably can never be proven. If under some ice sheet (as the planet continues to warm) we find a 100,000-year-old human intact, perhaps an examination of his or her brain and a comparison with the modern brain will give us the proof. Barring that very unlikely event, there is no way we can see what changed.

But it doesn't matter. Formal proof of Klein's conjecture (and of course, he is hardly the first to present such a theory) is unnecessary. We know from the behavioral changes that took place in something like a twinkling of an eye that humans beginning about 50,000 years ago were suddenly different. They had a culture that developed from the use of what might broadly be called symbolism. We can see this in the petroglyphs and cave art and artifacts that they left. We can also see it in the way they displaced the Neanderthals in Europe and left no trace of Homo erectus elsewhere in the world, and how quickly they spread to the far corners of the planet.

It is easy to see that they must have had symbolic language as well. Indeed, I think language really is the key to what happened, and this is Klein's point as well. The key idea is that "language is almost a kind of sixth sense, since it allows people to supplement their five primary senses with information drawn from the primary senses of others." (p. 146)

Today's mighty culture would be impossible without written language or some means of taking down and recording and maintaining human knowledge. Prior to written language this was done through an oral tradition handed down from one generation to the next. Myths, stories, poetry, ideas, information and methods were memorized and recited. Prior to that however, prior to the use of symbolic language, there would have been only a limited ability to pass ideas down from one generation to the next. It would have been difficult to even share some ideas with a contemporary. But once symbolic language developed, people could demonstrate events and things not present with others through the use of words--that is, symbols standing for the actual objects or events--nouns and verbs.

From a representation symbolically of something seen or something that happened, it was only a step to a representation of something never seen before--such as a net for catching birds or fish or a stampede of wildebeests over a cliff.

This is the innovation that Klein refers to. This is the difference between the Late Stone Age culture and the Middle Stone Age culture, between the Upper Paleolithic and the Mousterian. A human arm can throw a spear, but a human arm extended with a lance can throw the spear farther and with more force. People could travel only so far without water, but a people who carried water in skins or watertight baskets (not preserved in the fossil record obviously!) could travel much farther. Actually I imagine that the first truly modern humans may have carried soup--yes, soup with its sterile, boiled water--in skins on their backs!

What this book is about then is a close and detailed description of the progression from archaic humans to fully modern humans. It is a carefully constructed argument that shows that the change was not gradual, as some would have it, but abrupt. Whatever one may think about Gould and Eldredge's punctuated equilibrium, Klein makes it clear that in the case of human evolution, a key transformation--indeed THE key transformation--occurred quickly. The most persuasive part of their argument is that the "new" humans were able to not only dazzle us with their symbolic art, etc., they were able to grow their populations and thrive in places where humanoids had never survived before.

This book is also full of interesting information about archeology and anthropology, including how fossils are dated and theories developed. One of my favorite tidbits is this: the size of archaic human populations could be surmised by the size of tortoise bones! Since tortoises were relatively easy to catch, the biggest ones, "the most visible and the most meaty" would have been taken first. So as "the number of collectors increased, average tortoise size declined." (p. 166)

For many readers, the most interesting part of the book might be the distinction that Klein and Edgar make between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens: "It doesn't follow that Neanderthals and modern humans couldn't interbreed or that they never did, but the DNA results strongly support fossil and archeological findings that if interbreeding occurred, it was rare...this inference, together with fossil evidence...justifies their assignment to...separate species..." (pp. 185-186)

This is not an easy book, but it is not unnecessarily difficult either. I think Klein and Edgar did a good job of treading that fine line between being too technical (and jargony) and not technical enough.

By the way, despite the sensational subtitle (which only appears on the cover), the authors scrupulously and wisely avoid using the word "consciousness" throughout, and nowhere do they speak of a "Big Bang of Human Consciousness."

--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”

[Michael Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Klein & Edgar review the important fossils in human evolution beginning with the famous Lucy find. They describe who found it and how, where and when it was found. A careful consideration of what was found and its significance is presented with this and many other fossils which are considered to be important in understanding our evolution. They argue that evolution was in pulses rather than steady change through generations. And that changes in climatic conditions initiated change in hominids. Dry climate drove the arboreal apes onto the ground. Bipedalism led to tool use which led to brain enlargement. The primary argument is that Homo sapiens suddenly advanced to 'modern behavior' about 50,000 years ago and left Africa to populate the globe, eliminating the Homo erectus populations and Neandertals who were already in Asia and Europe.

This book was published in 2002 and is somewhat dated already, although Klein's premise of the change in Homo sapiens 50,000 years ago seems to have been accepted by many. His consideration of the significance of fossil evidence at various sites is especially valuable because he is very careful and explains the relevant techniques used in dating and interpretation. He does not rush to judgment, examines controversies from both sides, and suspends judgment when there is not enough evidence to be certain. He sifts through the evidence carefully. This in itself is educational to me because I have not read a lot of the human evolution literature.

The organization of the book is somewhat of a problem. In general, they write about the earliest fossils and gradually work their way to the European and Chinese fossils; from early Pliocene to the Holocene. However, within each period, fossils are presented in chronological order as they were discovered which resulted in some confusion for me. Perhaps this is endemic to the science because new fossils are being found even today which can be from any period. Also, the parallel species that became extinct add to the difficulty because we really can't be sure which were direct ancestors to Homo sapiens sapiens and which were not. There are many more fossils to discover.

Dr Robert Klein was a paleontologist at Stanford University and a respected scientist. I recommend this work primarily for the careful considerations of the reported fossils.

[Bettie]

Description: A bold new theory on what sparked the "big bang" of human culture
The abrupt emergence of human culture over a stunningly short period continues to be one of the great enigmas of human evolution. This compelling book introduces a bold new theory on this unsolved mystery. Author Richard Klein reexamines the archaeological evidence and brings in new discoveries in the study of the human brain. These studies detail the changes that enabled humans to think and behave in far more sophisticated ways than before, resulting in the incredibly rapid evolution of new skills. Richard Klein has been described as "the premier anthropologist in the country today" by Evolutionary Anthropology. Here, he and coauthor Blake Edgar shed new light on the full story of a truly fascinating period of evolution.

Richard G. Klein, PhD (Palo Alto, CA), is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of the definitive academic book on the subject of the origins of human culture, The Human Career. Blake Edgar (San Francisco, CA) is the coauthor of the very successful From Lucy to Language, with Dr. Donald Johanson. He has written extensively for Discover, GEO, and numerous other magazines.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview of human evolution. Seems haphazardly organized at times and occasionally repetitive. Somewhat dated at this point, but still valid. A brief, mildly informative, and unsatisfactory discussion of the cause of the dawn of human culture concludes the book.

The book is largely a broad descriptive overview of the anatomy, environment, and behavior of groups through fossil evidence as he traces the development of various human and ancestral lineages. It is informative during this prehistoric overview. The actual discussion of the "why" behind an unprecedented acceleration in innovation with modern humans is barely and somewhat sloppily discussed.

[Brandi Snell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was suggested reading in Lecture 2 of The Great Courses' - "The Big History of Civilization" (2011).

This book talks about the Archaeological evidence and the various scientific technics used to date hominid and associated fossils, tracing the evolution of humans. I think that it may be out of date on a lot of the information as it was published 21 years ago.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, it was interesting to learn about the evolution from apes to modern humans and the evidence they have left behind in Africa, Europe, and Asia.

[Raven]

A fascinating account of the archeological record which offers clues to the emergence of distinctly human consciousness. One might be a little disappointed that there is not a more through discussion of the continued development, signs, and implications of human art, craft, and communication. Though relatively dry, this volume is accessible to the uninitiated and gives detailed accounts of findings, geography, implications, the science involved, revisions in understanding over time and with new discoveries, and several interesting illustrations of both the emerging structure of what eventually became the modern human and their products. While this text seems only to touch upon the aspects of the subject which most interest me, it does give a through account of all the known apparent steps which led up to this 'dawn.' I had hoped it would go more into the sunrise.

[Jrobertus · Rating 3 out of 5]

a well documented book tracing the fossil record of the evolution of man. excellent scientific detail about dating methods and a clear description of modern thinking on the subject. it is concluded modern man arose in africa about 50,000 years ago and spread rapidly over more primitive species. a genetically based neurological alteration is the likely trigger for this sudden advance.

[Bonniejessee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating read on the distinct changes that occurred in human prehistory that made us culturally thriving beings. I am enjoying the book.

[Jamie H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very gripping, but informative and enlightening.

[Shaun]

Human (well, pre-human) history: 7,000,000 to 50,000 years ago.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was pretty easy-to-read and set out the process of human evolution in a nice, orderly fashion. While it didn't go in-depth, I thought that it provided a great overall view of human evolution.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Argues for the Great Leap Forward of human culture around 50 000 years before present. Well done, but did not address alternate theory.

[George Girton · Rating 4 out of 5]

50,000 years ago, something happened. What was it!