{"id":14848,"date":"2012-12-11T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T15:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=14848"},"modified":"2012-12-11T09:00:36","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T15:00:36","slug":"masters-of-the-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/11\/masters-of-the-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"Masters of the Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2012\/12\/Screen-Shot-2012-12-10-at-1.47.49-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/files\/2012\/12\/Screen-Shot-2012-12-10-at-1.47.49-PM-198x300.png?resize=198%2C300\" alt=\"\" title=\"Screen Shot 2012-12-10 at 1.47.49 PM\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-14849\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a>Yesterday I wrote about <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2012\/12\/10\/the-evolution-of-modern-humans\/\">Chris Stringer&#8217;s modified version of human evolution<\/a>. Today, let&#8217;s have a look at Ian Tattersall&#8217;s new book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/023010875X\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325&#038;creativeASIN=023010875X&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;tag=wwwgregladenc-20\">Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (Macsci)<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=wwwgregladenc-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=023010875X\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>.  Tatersall&#8217;s boo, like Sringer&#8217;s, is a good overview of the newer evidence in the constantly changing field, but he goes back earlier and provides a much broader context for human evolution.  His main thesis is that the features that made modern humans unique have two main characteristics: 1) they were sufficient and causal in the process of making that one species &#8220;master of the planet&#8221; and 2) the transition to fully modern form, with respect to those features, is relatively late.  Tattersall argues for a late and rather sudden development of symbolic abilities and language (I disagree with this) and seems to agree with Klein in something like a &#8220;single gene&#8221; theory describing this transition as sudden and dramatic.  So, I basically disagree with his thesis, but if you want a good source to find out about the &#8220;symbolic explosion&#8221; version of modern humans, this is accessible and the documentation is pretty thorough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I wrote about Chris Stringer&#8217;s modified version of human evolution. Today, let&#8217;s have a look at Ian Tattersall&#8217;s new book, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins (Macsci). Tatersall&#8217;s boo, like Sringer&#8217;s, is a good overview of the newer evidence in the constantly changing field, but he goes back earlier and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/11\/masters-of-the-planet\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Masters of the Planet<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[40,194,84],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-3Ru","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}