The Cradle of Humanity How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart 1st Edition by Mark Maslin 0191009716 9780191009716

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ISBN-10 :  0191009716 

ISBN-13 :  9780191009716

Author:  Mark Maslin 

Humans are rather weak when compared with many other animals. We are not particular fast and have no natural weapons. Yet Homo sapiens currently number nearly 7.5 billion and are set to rise to nearly 10 billion by the middle of this century. We have influenced almost every part of the Earth system and as a consequence are changing the global environmental and evolutionary trajectory of the Earth. So how did we become the worlds apex predator and take over the planet? Fundamental to our success is our intelligence, not only individually but more importantly collectively. But why did evolution favour the brainy ape? Given the calorific cost of running our large brains, not to mention the difficulties posed for childbirth, this bizarre adaptation must have given our ancestors a considerable advantage. In this book Mark Maslin brings together the latest insights from hominin fossils and combines them with evidence of the changing landscape of the East African Rift Valley to show how all these factors led to selection pressures that favoured our ultrasocial brains. Astronomy, geology, climate, and landscape all had a part to play

The Cradle of Humanity: How the Changing Landscape of Africa Made Us So Smart 1st Table of contents:

1. Introduction
In the beginning
Ten key steps in human evolution
2. Early Human Evolution
Five stages of human evolution
Stage 1: Earliest hominins
Stage 2: Appearance of Australopithecus
Stage 3: Homo and Paranthropus
Stage 4: Homo erectus
Stage 5: The journey towards Homo sapiens
3. Tectonics and Climate
Horizontal tectonics
Deep ocean circulation
Monsoons
Vertical tectonics
Atmospheric barriers
Volcanic eruptions
Icehouse and greenhouse worlds
4. Cradle of Humanity
Formation of the East Africa Rift System
Rifting influence on climate and vegetation
Changing landscapes and the origins of bipedalism
5. Global Climate Change
Super-lush Earth
Growth of ice sheets
What caused the big freeze?
The Great Salt Crisis
Appearance of tropical grasses
The Panama Paradox
Why 2.5 million years ago?
The tropics react to the ice ages
Longer, deeper, more intense ice ages
Unstable ice ages
6. Celestial Mechanics
Orbital forcing
Waxing and waning of the great ice ages
Glacial–interglacial cycles
Orbital forcing and the African climate
East African Rift System lakes
7. African Climate Pulses
Theories of evolution
Theories of early human evolution
Pulsed climate variability
Human evolution within the new framework
Hominin dispersals
8. The Social Brain
What good is a large brain?
Group size: the magic number 150
Our expensive brain
Language
Sexual behaviour and human evolution
The Homo sapiens problem
Self-domestication of humans
Equality improves networking
Dispersal of modern humans
Neanderthals
9. The Future of Humanity
Evidence for the Anthropocene
Human drivers of evolution
Anthropocene paradigm shift
The future of human evolution
Homo dominatus
References and Further Reading

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Tags: The Cradle, Humanity, Changing Landscape, Mark Maslin