The Cradle of Humanity: How the changing landscape of Africa made us so smart

Book: The Cradle of Humanity: How the changing landscape of Africa made us so smart

• Sets the story of human evolution in the context of the East Africa's changing landscape and climate
• Offers a radical new theory of how rapid climate change affected hominin brain development
• Draws on evidence from a variety of disciplines, including palaeoclimatology, palaeoceanography, palaeoanthropology, geology, archaeology, and evolution
• Presents key new ideas from the rapidly developing and often controversial field of human evolution
• With a Foreword by Richard Leakey

We humans have named ourselves Homo sapiens – ‘the wise man’ – a peculiarly self-confident title to bestow upon a species that is seemingly threatening to bring about its own demise as quickly as possible. Mark Maslin prefers Homo dominatus – ‘the dominant man’. [...] Geographical