Evolution History

From the big bang to the origin and evolution of intelligent life in a search for the meaning of human existence, Why Are We Here?, by author Bruce Brodie, offers a look at evolution and the future of life on the planet.

But the quest to unravel life's genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life's family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life's beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

From the Siberian permafrost to balmy California, scientists across the globe are working to resurrect all kinds of extinct animals, from ones that just left us to those that have been gone for many thousands of years. Their tools in this hunt are both fossils and cutting-edge genetic technologies. Some of these scientists are driven by sheer curiosity; others view the lost species as a powerful weapon in the fight to preserve rapidly changing ecosystems. It seems certain that these animals will walk the earth again, but what world will that give us? And is any of this a good idea?

History is full of strange animal stories, invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney, and they reveal as much about us and the things we believe as they do about the animals they misrepresent. We once thought that eels were born from sand, that swallows migrated to the moon, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that were licked into shape by their mothers.

In Mavericks, Money and Men, football historian Charles Ross chronicles the AFL's key events, including Buck Buchanan becoming the first overall draft pick in 1963, and the 1965 boycott led by black players who refused to play in the AFL All Star game after experiencing blatant racism. He also recounts how the success of the AFL forced a merger with the NFL in 1969, which arguably facilitated the evolution of modern professional football.

The first all-new collection of poems since 2011’s Snowflake/different streets - and following the critically acclaimed Afterglow (a dog memoir), as well as the volume of selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice - here, in Evolution, we find the eminent, exuberant writer at the forefront of American literature, upending genre in a new vernacular that enacts - like nobody else - the way we speak (inside and out) today. Evolution, with its channeling of Quakers, Fresca, and cell phones, radiates vital insight, purpose, and risk.

Conspiracy theories have always been around. Some are benign, while others are more sinister and seek to create rampant social disorder and chaos. QAnon is the latter. Gaining a foothold in recent years, it is said to have infiltrated the highest political offices. What has accelerated its pervasiveness is the effectiveness of modern communication methods, including social media.

Does human life have any meaning? Does the question even make sense today? For centuries, the question of the meaning or purpose of human life was assumed by scholars and theologians to have a religious answer: Life has meaning because humans were made in the image of a good god. In the 19th century, however, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution changed everything - and the human organism was seen to be more machine than spirit.

Among all life on Earth, we alone experience rich moral emotions, follow complex rules governing how we treat one another, and engage in moral dialogue. But how did human morality evolve? And can humans become morally evolved? In A Better Ape, Victor Kumar and Richmond Campbell draw on the latest research in the biological and social sciences to explain the key role that morality has played in human evolution.

The Well-Dressed Ape, aka Homo sapiens, is a strange mammal. It thinks of itself as complex, intelligent, and in every way superior to other animals - but is it, really? With wit, humility, and penetrating insight, science journalist Hannah Holmes casts the inquisitive eye of a trained researcher and reporter on...herself. And not just on herself, but on our whole species - what Shakespeare called "the paragon of animals."

Offering a bold new understanding of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going, noted ecologist Mark Bertness argues that human beings and their civilization are the products of the same self-organization, evolutionary adaptation, and natural selection processes that have created all other life on Earth. Bertness follows the evolutionary process from the primordial soup of two billion years ago through today, exploring the ways opposing forces of competition and cooperation have led to current assemblages of people, animals, and plants.

Adam Decoded involves the listener to participate in solving the age-long question of man's origin. Who are we? Where are we from? Who really were Adam and Eve, and where is the Garden of Eden? This book, the long-awaited sequel to Adam = Alien, helps to decode the past using credible photographic and written texts.

Volume two is based on the Jungian interpretation of the 12 steps for the initiation of a capacity the two-hemisphere brain achieved 100,000 years ago, leaping to a new qualium level of consciousness by integrating its subjective and objective cognitive modes (gnosis and science). A critical mass of humanity is already inventing and building a new self-reflective, living system that can meet the challenge of the environment to turn vision into action - though time is running short.

The Mesozoic Era, which lasted from about 252 to 66 million years ago, is divided into three periods, the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. During this era, one type of life came to dominate the planet more completely and for a longer period than had been seen before or since; this was the Age of Reptiles. Beginning in the Triassic but especially in the Jurassic period, reptiles came to dominate the oceans, the land and even the skies.

Few of us know much about the biology of sex determination, but what could be more interesting than to discover how we are shaped into males and females? In this book, Elof Carlson tells the incredible story of the difficult quest to understand how the body forms girls and boys. Carlson's history takes us from antiquity to the present day to detail how each component of human reproduction and sexuality was identified and studied....

Jack returns and finds himself staring down his most formidable adversary: the high priest of the insidious Promethite Cult. This Chaos Mage, a Master of Entropy, has ambitions beyond anything Jack has ever faced. As the cult's designs unfold, promising a new world order forged from chaos, Jack is ensnared in a colossal clash against a legion of elemental and psychic titans. Every move, every choice, feels like a dance on the knife's edge, with the very essence of existence at stake.

This delightful little book, published in the 1800s, gives a concise and illuminating history of our present-day alphabet. Although later scholarship has augmented much of what we know about our alphabet in the last 140 years, this text still is worthy as an appetizer for further exploration.

For Irwin Shapiro, science starts with questions. This book provides a broad and entertaining survey of major scientific discoveries that have changed our views of nature and, in turn, spawned further questions. Shapiro, an award-winning scientist and beloved teacher, separates his inquiry into three parts: looking up at the universe; looking down at the earth and its fossils; and looking in at the story of life. His framework encourages listeners to view science as a detective story—to observe and question nature and natural phenomena, and to base all conclusions on scientific evidence.

Linen, cotton, silk, synthetics, wool: through the stories of these five fabrics, Sofi Thanhauser illuminates the world we inhabit in a startling new way, travelling from China to Cumbria to reveal the craft, labour and industry that create the clothes we wear. From the women who transformed stalks of flax into linen to clothe their families in 19th-century New England to those who earn their dowries in the cotton-spinning factories of South India today, this book traces the origins of garment making through time and around the world.

This audiobook takes a closer look at who Charles Darwin was, how he lived his everyday life and how influential he became; not just in his own day but into the modern world as well. Find out what interested his incredible mind and how Darwin presented his theories to a yet unsuspecting world. From beetles to butterflies, coral reefs and tropical islands, from apes to humans, learn how Charles Darwin's evidence speaks even to the world today.