Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.95 (970 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0394534816 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 505 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-02-10 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Sagan and Druyan find chimps' social life "hauntingly familiar" with its hierarchy, combat, suppression of females and chimps' remarkable ability to communicate through symbols. The last third of the book, dealing with chimpanzees, baboons and apes, is the most interesting. From Publishers Weekly In a leisurely, lyrical meditation on the roughly four-billion-year span since life dawned on Earth, Sagan and Druyan ( Comet ) argue that territoriality, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, occasional outbreeding and a preference for small, semi-isolated groups are elements in a survival strategy common to many species, including Homo sapiens. Yet society's problems, they asser
Jack Ramsey said A life changing book. I love this book. I read it many years ago. Sagan's and Druyan's fascinating, crystal clear explanation of the universe and life on our planet gave me clarity and peace about my own life, my own imperfections, and my own mortality. I've seen Ann Druyan (Sagan's widow) speak, and it's clear this book was a true collaboration between two brilliant scientists.. Homo Sapiens in Perspective Let's begin with this: Carl Sagan was a master of popular science writing. Nobody wrote more compelling about science for the non-scientific reader. This book is a brief history of the universe as it relates to the development of mankind. It covers a lot of territory and the history of the universe is necessarily cursory. His introduction to genetics is basic, but very readable for the non-scientist. This book really begins to "cook" when Sagan begins to discuss the behavioral and societal charactistic of our close relatives, the primates. Read it and draw your own conclusions, but I was as. "Have You Ever Wondered Who We Are?" according to Tim Davis. After I read The Dragons of Eden, I learned that Carl Sagan explored more than cosmology. He also explored evolutionary biology-stimulated by his wife, the biologist Ann Druyan. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a book that Sagan and Druyan wrote together. It is much more scientifically rigorous and sophisticated than The Dragons of Eden, and deals not with the evolution of the tripartite brain, but on the evolution of consciousness itself. Druyan and Sagan write that we are like babies left in a basket on a doorstep, never knowing and always wondering what our ancestry is. For me, the most
Astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its insights, and an absolutely compelling read, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS is a triumph of popular science.From the Trade Paperback edition.. Absorbing and elegantly written, it tells of theorigins of life on earth, describes its variety and charaacter, and culminates in a discussion of human nature and teh complex traces ofhumankind's evolutionary pastIt is an amazing story masterfully told."FINANCIAL TIMES (LONDON)World renowned scientist Carl Sagan and acclaimed author Ann Druyan have written a ROOTS for the human species, a lucid and riveting account of how humans got to be the way we are. "DazzlingA feast. It shows with humor and drama that many of our key traits--self-awareness, technology, family ties, submission to authority, hatred for those a little different from ourselves, reason, and ethics--are rooted in the deep past, and illuminated by our kinship with other animals