Noel T. Boaz

From ape to modern human, a compelling view of humanity's evolution seeks to explain how the long ignored effects of ecological and environmental changes that occurred during the process may have contributed significantly to our development.

How The Human Being Emerged From The Cataclysmic History Of The Earth

Eco Homo

Russell L. Ciochon

"Peking Man," a cave man once thought a great hunter who had first tamed fire, actually was a composite of the gnawed remains of some fifty women, children, and men unfortunate enough to have been the prey of the giant cave hyena. Researching the famous fossil site of Dragon Bone Hill in China, scientists Noel T. Boaz and Russell L. Ciochon retell the story of the cave's unique species of early human, Homo erectus. Boaz and Ciochon take readers on a gripping scientific odyssey. New evidence shows that Homo erectus was an opportunist who rode a tide of environmental change out Africa and into Eurasia, puddle-jumping from one gene pool to the next. Armed with a shaky hold on fire and some sharp rocks, Homo erectus incredibly survived for over 1.5 million years, much longer than our own species Homo sapiens has been on Earth. Tell-tale marks on fossil bones show that the lives of these early humans were brutal, ruled by hunger and who could strike the hardest blow, yet there are fleeting glimpses of human compassion as well. The small brain of Homo erectus and its strangely unchanging culture indicate that the species could not talk. Part of that primitive culture included ritualized aggression, to which the extremely thick skulls of Homo erectus bear mute witness. Both a vivid recreation of the unimagined way of life of a prehistoric species, so similar yet so unlike us, and a fascinating exposition of how modern multidisciplinary research can test hypotheses in human evolution, Dragon Bone Hill is science writing at its best.

An Ice-Age Saga of Homo erectus

Dragon Bone Hill

Human illnesses can be understood as damage to those adaptationsthat we took on at various stages in our evolution from pre-lifemolecules to modern Homo sapiens. Preventing these illnessesentails avoiding what causes the damage-- which too frequently arethe everyday hazards of twenty-first-century life, as the chartbelow shows: Level of Evolution Cause of adaptive failure resulting disease or problem Pre-life Environmental poisons Certain birth defects Single cell (bacteria and amoeba-like) Viral infection Colds/flu/HIV Morula (sponge-like) Cellular stress Cancer Chordate Physical stress Back pain Fish Excess dietary salt Hypertension/heart disease Amphibian Tobacco smoke Lung cancer/emphysema Lower primate Excess dietary sugar Diabetes mellitus Higher primate Vitamin C deficiency Scurvy Ape Excess dietary protein Gout Homo sapiens Reduced dietary variety Nutritionaldiseases/food allergies

Noel T. Boaz

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