From the Bookshelf of Science and Inquiry…

Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived

Chip Walter

Start date: August 1, 2013

Finish date: August 31, 2013

Discussion: Book Club 2013

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Book Club 2013

December 2013: "The Strangest Man"
By David · 22 posts · 150 views

last updated Jan 03, 2016 10:51AM

June 2013 - Cosmos
By Betsy , co-mod · 45 posts · 171 views

last updated Mar 11, 2014 04:07PM

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What Members Thought

Aug 15, 2013 David Rubenstein rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, evolution, natural-history, biology, paleontology

There is evidence that over twenty different human or near-human species have lived in the past seven million years. They did not all live sequentially; many lived at the same time, and probably interacted from time to time. Some species may have killed off others, while perhaps they inter-bred on occasion. (How do two different species interbreed? That is not clear to me.) In the end, only homo sapiens survived. This is the story of how and why our species survived. It wasn't a fore-ordained re ...more

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Jun 27, 2013 Steve Van Slyke rated it liked it

Shelves: science, evolution, paleoanthropology, kindle

This was a tough one to rate. I would have liked to have given it another star but I didn't because sometimes he goes off on tangents that I felt were either not germane or were "unscientific" and by that I mean he quotes paleoantropology hypotheses for which there is no way to test. So for me they were just conjecture.

On the other hand there were some great parts of the book, such as summarizing the latest findings on the various branches of the human family tree, and his projections about how ...more

2 likes · Like · see review