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9780198704539

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In this tale of mountains, monsoons, and meteorites, climate and ocean currents, Maslin masterfully puts human evolution into context, and shows how the earth and its environments have shaped us. * Professor Alice Roberts, anthropologist, author, and broadcaster * A powerful, gripping account of how the dynamic earth shaped human evolution... With impressive ease, Maslin packs a tremendous amount of knowledge into a flowing narraitve, making the point that special conditions for a number of species of tropical apes on the African continent eventually turned out to be luck... A tour de force through Earth's history and a timely reminder of just how lucky we are to be here at all. * Peter C. Kjaergaard, Director and Professor, Natural History Museum of Denmark * Understanding the emergence of our species from the unique landscapes of East Africa is one of the great scientific challenges. Mark Maslin takes us on an exhilarating intellectual journey, encompassing geology, astronomy, climate science and evolutionary biology, to argue that the unique landscape and ever-changing climate of the East African Rift Valley were instrumental in catalysing the emergence of a civilisation on our planet. I'm left with a dizzying feeling of our good fortune to be here at all, and a powerful sense of our responsibility, as Maslin notes, to earn our species name: Wise . * Professor Brian Cox * This book offers far more than a palaeoanthropological cocktail with a twist ... In synthesising the most recent research in palaeoanthropology and giving the ecology of our ancestors a climatological twist, Maslin has produced a book that is fascinating, humbling and informative. * Adrian Barnett, New Scientist * Anyone who reads The Cradle of Humanity will certainly be enlightened about this awe-inspiring journey. * Andrew Robinson, Current World Archaeology * Impressively in-depth and well-explained mix of encyclopaedic information... There is an amazing amount of information packed into this surprisingly slim book. * Chris Fitch, Geographical *

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Mark Maslin is Professor of Palaeoclimatology at University College London. He is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holder, a Royal Society Industry Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. Maslin has published over 160 papers in journals such as Science and Nature on past and future climate change and its effects on the carbon cycle, human health, biodiversity, and human evolution. He is the author of Climate: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2013), and Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2014), now in its third edition.

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