Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time

by Gaia Vince

Overview

In the tradition of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, a winner of the Royal Society Prize for Science Books shows how four tools enabled has us humans to control the destiny of our species
"A wondrous, visionary work." --Tim Flannery, scientist and author of the bestselling The Weather Makers
What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something marvelous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465094912
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster. In 2015, she was the first woman to win the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book prize solo for her debut, Adventures in the Anthropocene. She has held senior editorial posts at Nature and New Scientist, and writes for Science, the Guardian, and others. She lives in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Genesis 11

1 Conception 13

2 Birth 19

Fire 27

3 Landscaping 29

4 Brain Building 43

5 Cultural Levers 59

Word 79

6 Story 81

7 Language 105

8 Telling 127

Beauty 147

9 Belonging 149

10 Trinkets and Treasures 175

11 Builders 199

Time 227

12 Timekeepers 229

13 Reason 245

14 Homni 265

Acknowledgments 279

Notes 281

Index 327

Editorial Reviews

A best book of the year (Times of London)

"History doesn't get much bigger than this epic sweep through human progress....Vince takes dizzying leaps, making connections between archaeology, anthropology, genetics, and psychology."—Tom Whipple, Times of London

"Any story that begins with the words '14 billion years ago' is bound to be epic, and Transcendence is no exception... An impressive breadth of research from paleoarchaeology to genetics to anthropology."—M.R. O'Connor, Undark

"A hugely enjoyable sprint through human evolutionary history... and a good story."—Tim Radford, Nature

"Captivating... A provocative, highly readable take on our astonishing emergence from the primordial soup."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A wondrous, visionary work."—Tim Flannery, scientist and authorof The Weather Makers

"Transcendence is a beautifully imaginative overview of the biological and cultural evolution of humans. Richly informed by the latest research, Vince's colorful survey fizzes like a zip-wire as it tours our species' story from the Big Bang to the coming age of hyper-cooperation."—Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at HarvardUniversity and author of The Goodness Paradox

"An imaginative and inspiring adventure into the origins and evolution of what we hold most dear: our human culture."—Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development UCL

"This book goes from the Big Bang to the Hundred Thousand Genome Project to make a convincing case that Homo sapiens has become a super-organism. I learned a lot from it and so will you."—Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of HumanGenetics UCL and author of Here Comes the Sun

"Science writer Vince looks at human evolution in terms of four elements — dubbed Fire, Word, Beauty, and Time — in this stimulating account... Even those broadly familiar with humanity's story will find new information and insights in Vince's fascinating study."
—Publishers Weekly

"An engaging, well-researched book for anyone curious about the development of humanity as approached through a social lens."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

★ 2019-09-24
Award-winning British science writer Vince (Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made, 2014) describes how the interplay of our genes, environment, and culture made us "the only species to determine its own destiny."

In this captivating story of evolution from the Big Bang to the present Anthropocene, the former Nature and New Scientist editor traces four key elements—fire, language, beauty, and time—that have allowed humans to grow from "an endangered puny primate on the savannahs of Africa to become the most numerous big animal on Earth." In thoughtful explorations, the author shows how each of these forces contributed, in powerful, often surprising ways, to humankind's dominance. Fire made possible resources beyond our own muscle power, changed the food density of the landscape, and cooked meats, making them easier to digest. Fire also offered protection for childbirth, enabling us to grow bigger brains, become sociable, and acquire cultural know-how. "Making and controlling fire gave humans an amazing ability to transform the stuff of our planet into the materials of our manmade world," writes Vince. Language gave us oral stories—"collective memory banks"—to guide and bind us, took the form of writing 5,000 years ago, and now makes "cumulative cultural evolution visible" through Wikipedia, where vast amounts of cultural information are conveyed with fidelity to many people at once. Beauty, much valued, spurred trade in trinkets and helped give rise to permanent settlements, ordering the world and expressing our values, whether in the monoliths of Easter Island or in cities conquering the natural environment. Lastly, the concept of time helped organize life, eased trade, removed uncertainty in interactions, and allowed us to predict events in an unknown future. The author draws on extensive travels and many interviews with scientists to offer vivid accounts of these forces at work in the lives of our "cultural forebears."

A provocative, highly readable take on our astonishing emergence from the primordial soup.

Kirkus Reviews