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A Pocket History of Human Evolution by Silvana Condemi & Francois Savatier
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A Pocket History of Human Evolution

How We Became Sapiens

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Narrator Christa Lewis

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Length 3 hours 30 minutes
Language English
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Why aren't we more like other apes? How did we win the evolutionary race? Find out how "wise" Homo sapiens really are.

Prehistory has never been more exciting: New discoveries are overturning long-held theories left and right. Stone tools in Australia date back 65,000 years—a time when, we once thought, the first Sapiens had barely left Africa. DNA sequencing has unearthed a new hominid group—the Denisovans—and confirmed that crossbreeding with them (and Neanderthals) made Homo sapiens who we are today.

A Pocket History of Human Evolution brings us up-to-date on the exploits of all our ancient relatives. Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier consider what accelerated our evolution: Was it tools, our "large" brains, language, empathy, or something else entirely? And why are we the sole survivors among many early bipedal humans? Their conclusions reveal the various ways ancient humans live on today—from gossip as modern "grooming" to our gendered division of labor—and what the future might hold for our strange and unique species.

Silvana Condemi, a paleoanthropologist, is the research director of CNRS, the largest French public scientific research organization, at Aix-Marseille University. She is coauthor, with Francois Savatier, of A Pocket History of Human Evolution: How We Became Sapiens.

Francois Savatier is a journalist for the magazine Pour la Science (the French edition of Scientific American), where he focuses on the science of the past. He is coauthor, with Silvana Condemi, of A Pocket History of Human Evolution: How We Became Sapiens.

Christa Lewis and her pseudonym Pippa Jayne have narrated 265 audiobooks between them. Christa is a conservatory trained actor with a smart and funny vibe who can also meet the moment in nonfiction thanks to a seventeen-year stint as a newsreader. Christa speaks accent-free German fluently and offers a variety of accents and dialects. Magically, there have been eight AudioFile Earphones Awards in nonfiction/biography and memoir, YA, and fiction-as well as a SOVAS Voice Arts Award, a Sultry Listeners Award, a Listeners Choice Award, and two Audie nominations.

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Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!

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