Product Description

Alice Roberts has been travelling the world - from Ethiopian desert to Malay peninsula and from Russian steppes to Amazon basin - in order to understand the challenges that early humans faced as they tried to settle continents. On her travels she has witnessed some of the daunting and brutal challenges our ancestors had to face: mountains, deserts, oceans, changing climates, terrifying giant beasts and volcanoes. But she discovers that perhaps the most serious threat of all came from other humans. When our ancestors set out from Africa there were already two other species of human on the planet: Neanderthal in Europe and Homo erectus in Asia. Both (contrary to popular perception) were intelligent, adept at making tools and weapons and were long adapted to their environments. So, Alice asks, why did only Homo sapiens survive? Part detective story, part travelogue, and drawing on the latest genetic and archaeological discoveries, Alice examines how our ancestors evolved physically in response to these challenges, finding out how our colour, shape, size, diet, disease resistance and even athletic ability have been shaped by the range of environments that our ancestors had to survive. She also relates how astonishingly closely related we all are. As a lecturer in Anatomy at Bristol University, Alice Roberts is eminently qualified to write this book. As a talented artist, she is perfectly qualified to illustrate it, and dotted throughout this lively book are many of the sketches and photographs from her travels.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5284 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-05
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

About the Author
Alice Roberts is a qualified medical doctor and lecturer in Anatomy at Bristol University. She is a regular contributor to Channel 4's Time Team and BBC2's Coast series, and the presenter of Don't Die Young on BBC2.

Customer Reviews

what a lovely book
Beautifully written and illustrated, this book goes into a lot more scientific detail than the BBC series but never overwhelms the reader. If you like science writing and travel books then you will love this.

I believe it! It's amazing but not incredible!
This fills in a lot of the gaps in the programmes, and is not quite so sensational (except for the parts of Alice's journey where things almost went wrong!). While not incredible to anyone with a bit of scientific knowledge, it is very interesting, especially as the bits of the DNA history in the human genome start to bear out many of the theories of migration which were developed since Darwin.

Incredible Human Journey
This is a wonderful book, much more informative than the television series and a useful backup to it. While I was reading it, I ordered another copy for my son-in-law when I heard that he and my daughter were fascinated by the TV series. Clever line illustrations by the author Alice Roberts greatly enhance the book, and there are plenty of maps. I am gripped by the central idea that only about 200 families originally emerged out of Africa and between them populated the whole world.