Just Finished Reading: The Book of Humans – A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us by Adam Rutherford (FP: 2018) [233pp] 

We are, according to Charles Darwin, the paragon of animals. But what makes us so? Many animals are faster, stronger or more prolific. There are animals that can fly, swim, dig in the earth much better than we can. So, what makes us so special? An age-old answer is that we are tool users. But over the years this has been shown to be far less unique than we first thought. Not only were other Homo species also tool users but the precursors to the whole Homo genus seemed to use tools too. Likewise other living creatures are tool users – not only other primates but birds, dolphins and numerous insects. Even our use of fire no longer seems exclusive any longer. Again, other primates use fire for their own ends and even birds have been recorded spreading fire deliberately to flush out game or feast on the cooked remains of animals who couldn’t escape the flames. War seems to be a defining ‘quality’ of humanity, but chimps especially engage in long running campaigns to eradicate opposition and take their land. We are likewise notoriously sexual beings but have nothing on some of our fellow primates who use sex far more frequently and in far more inventive ways than even we do. Even homosexuality, long considered to be a so-called ‘perversion of nature’ is nothing of the kind, indeed it is so common throughout the animal kingdom that it is hardly worth the mention. About the only thing that is substantially different – in scale rather than kind – is our use of culture and especially our use of language. In both these areas we far outpace any other creature on Earth. Our language(s) allow the passage of information – often in great detail – to exist at levels can only be dreamt of by other animals. Our culture can be preserved in writing and can cross boundaries in both time and space than have never existed before and, therefore, can be built on over the millennia allowing us to both expand across the whole planet and build entire civilisations on the foundations of those who have gone before. Although some has been lost much has been retained and expanded over the ages. 

This is a really good start to the years reading (although I actually read it about 2-3 weeks ago). I have a long-standing fascination with human evolution which never seems to fade. Despite there being still much to discover about our tangled origins and both our precursors and our contemporaries on the evolutionary tree, we are slowly filling in the gaps and, interestingly, pushing back the timelines of ‘firsts’ - tool use, painting, burial rituals and so on – that enrich our past. I was particularly struck here by the discussion on the origins of language in our earliest ancestors both from a genetic point of view and from a physiological one. Language use is so important to our early dominance of the world that it's interesting to see the genetic ‘quirks’ that gave rise to a brain capable of such complex vocalisations. 

If, like me, you’re always looking for new information or new insights into our species you could do far worse than pick up this often-fascinating book. The only thing I’d warn some readers about is that there’s quite an extensive (around 60 pages) look at sex – human and non-human – which might put some people off. But it does help to illustrate that there’s little new under the sun. You might not look at giraffes quite the same way though... Recommended and more to come, both on the topic and by this author.