The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE

In the first volume in The New Oxford World History series, renowned anthropologist Ian Tattersall thoroughly examines both the fossil and archeological records to explore the major turning points in human evolution: the emergence of the genus Homo, the advantages of bipedalism--the trait that most strongly distinguishes humans from other primates--the birth of the big brain and symbolic thinking, Paleolithic and Neolithic tool-making, and finally the enormously consequential shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and elsewhere.