Mann shows how a new generation of researchers equipped with novel scientific techniques have come to previously unheard-of conclusions about the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans: In 1491 there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe. Certain cities--such as Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital--were greater in population than any European city. Tenochtitlan, unlike any capital in Europe at that time, had running water,...

An exploration of new theories about the formation and evolution of the universe traces from the big bang, through the first three billion years on Earth, to today's search for life on other planets.

"In the tradition of E.H. Gombrich, Stephen Hawking, and Alan Weisman-an entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story. In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place-in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in...

Outlines a reassessment of human evolution that draws on recent fossil findings and challenges current theories to say that humans coexisted and competed across the African continent while exchanging genes, tools, and behaviors.

For more than a century, scientists have raced to unravel the human family tree and have grappled with its complications. Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world's leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime - a perfectly fossilized early primate, older than the previously most

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Who are we? It's a question humankind has been asking about itself for a long time. But when we consider ourselves not as static beings fixed in time, but as ever-changing creatures, our viewpoint of human history becomes much more captivating. The question is no longer "Who are we?" but "What have we become? And what are we becoming? "What makes this new viewpoint possible is the evolutionary perspective offered by biological anthropology, through

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In this updated edition of the 2001 classic, Robbins details how much has changed over the past decade, with more of us turning toward plant-based diets. But abuses and hazards remain, and he issues a new call to arms, urging us toward a more sustainable, compassionate world.