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The First Human
- The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's summary
The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.
An award-winning science writer, Ann Gibbons introduces the various maverick fossil hunters and describes their most significant discoveries in Africa. There is Tim White, the irreverent and brilliant Californian whose team discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived more than 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. If White can prove that it was hominid, an ancestor of humans and not of chimpanzees or other great apes, he can lay claim to discovering the oldest known member of the human family. As White painstakingly prepares the bones, the French paleontologist Michel Brunet comes forth with another, even more startling find. Well known for his work in the most remote and hostile locations, Brunet and his team uncover a stunning skull in Chad that could set the date of the beginnings of humankind to almost seven million years ago.
Two other groups, one led by the zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by the British geologist Martin Pickford and his partner, Brigitte Senut, a French paleontologist, enter the race with landmark discoveries of other fossils vying for the status of the first human ancestor.
Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human takes listeners behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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How to Build a Dinosaur
- Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever
- By: Jack Horner, James Gorman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In movies, in novels, in comic strips, and on television, we've all seen dinosaurs - or at least somebody's educated guess of what they would look like. But what if it were possible to build, or grow, a real dinosaur without finding ancient DNA? Jack Horner, the scientist who advised Steven Spielberg on the blockbuster film Jurassic Park and a pioneer in bringing paleontology into the 21st century, teams up with the editor of the New York Times's Science Times section to reveal exactly what's in store.
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Good book but misplaced title
- By Robert on 06-19-15
By: Jack Horner, and others
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America Before
- The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization
- By: Graham Hancock
- Narrated by: Graham Hancock
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Stunning new archaeological discoveries in North America together with new genetic evidence have launched a revolution in our understanding of the remote past of our species and of the origins of civilization. Graham Hancock, the internationally best-selling author has been overwhelmingly vindicated by recent discoveries. America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization is a mind-dilating exploration of the mystery of ancient civilizations, amazing archaeological discoveries, and profound implications for how we lead our lives today.
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Fun to Think About
- By Amazon Customer on 04-26-19
By: Graham Hancock
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
- The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade. In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide.
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A very special book
- By Scott Fitzsimmons on 02-02-19
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First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
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More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer
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Letters to a Young Scientist
- By: Edward O. Wilxon
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
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Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist.
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
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Between Man and Beast
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- By: Monte Reel
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
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In 1856 Paul Du Chaillu marched into the equatorial wilderness of West Africa determined to bag an animal that, according to legend, was nothing short of a monster. When he emerged three years later, the summation of his efforts only hinted at what he'd experienced in one of the most dangerous regions on earth. Armed with an astonishing collection of zoological specimens, Du Chaillu leapt from the physical challenges of the jungle straight into the center of the biggest issues of the time.
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Extraordinary book! Masterpiece.
- By BVerité on 04-23-13
By: Monte Reel
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The Sediments of Time
- My Lifelong Search for the Past
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- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
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Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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Brilliant!
- By tess koffler on 04-07-21
By: Meave Leakey, and others
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The Suppressed History of America
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- By: Paul Schrag, Xaviant Haze
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Meriwether Lewis discovered far more than the history books tell - ancient civilizations, strange monuments, "nearly white, blue-eyed" Indians, and evidence that the American continent was visited long before the first European settlers arrived. And he was murdered to keep it all secret. Examining the shadows and cracks between America's official version of history, Xaviant Haze and Paul Schrag propose that the America of old taught in schools is not the America that was discovered by Lewis and Clark and other early explorers.
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Don't Bother
- By Georgia Deardoff on 03-31-17
By: Paul Schrag, and others
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The Neanderthals Rediscovered
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In recent years, the common perception of the Neanderthals has been transformed, thanks to new discoveries and paradigm-shattering scientific innovations. It turns out that the Neanderthals' behavior was surprisingly modern: they buried the dead, cared for the sick, hunted large animals in their prime, harvested seafood, and communicated with spoken language. Meanwhile, advances in DNA technologies are compelling us to reassess the Neanderthals' place in our own past.
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Fascinating Subject... Soporific Reader
- By Andrew E. Yarosh on 11-21-17
By: Dimitra Papagianni, and others
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How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)
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- By: Lyudmila Trut, Lee Alan Dugatkin
- Narrated by: Joe Hempel
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Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs - they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken - imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time.
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Amazing
- By paul on 10-26-17
By: Lyudmila Trut, and others
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What listeners say about The First Human
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sulpicia
- 06-26-18
An interesting look at the politics of discovery
This was a really interesting book for those interested in paleoanthropology! It is focused on the discoverers rather than the discoveries themselves, so it reads a little bit like a gossip column at times. Lots of fun, for those interested in the science.
Since the pace of paleoanthropological discovery seems to be speeding up, this book is already slightly out of date (it was published in 2006). It remains useful.
The narrator is fine, but she constantly mispronounces words. Mispronunciations of foreign words would be excusable (and there is a little of that). The real problem is incorrect stressing of words (e.g. "permit" the noun pronounced as "permit" the verb, etc.). This makes it sound like the narrator has no idea what she's reading.
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- Fred V.
- 08-28-22
Naughty Boys Fossil Finders
Fossil hunters look for archaic humans. Some finds are debatable: is it chimp/ape or the first creature on the trail to Brad Pitt. What's not debatable is the upright bipedal fossil freaks are entirely HUMAN. They seek glory and gratitude, prizes and praise. They play the game and crave the thrill of victory and don't care who suffers the agony of defeat. HUMANS. Yes, HUMANS.
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- L. Brevig
- 11-20-21
Narrator is really awful
I'm going to have to stop listening to this. The narrator keeps pronouncing Meave Leakey's name wrong and it's driving me crazy. It's not MAYVE, it's pronounced MEEVE. If it was spelled Maeve, she'd be right. Did no one tell her this? Also, she's narrating like she's talking to a kindergarten class, not adults who have some familiarity with the subject. The book is very superficial so far and the author is having a love-fest with Tim White. I admire him and his work, but am not in love with him. Book is not for me.
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Overall
- Ted
- 09-23-06
Good Content, Bad Narration
Gibbons covers her topic thoroughly and weaves together the complete story so that it keeps the listener's attention throughout. I agree with Michael from Baltimore's review that the tensions among paleanthropologists is one of the fascinating aspects of the whole story.
However, be advised that the narration has problems. This production needed much better editorial oversight. Raudman's peculiar inflections frequently over-emphasize a word, disrupting the flow. She sometimes sounded as though she were reading a children's story. Raudman also mis-pronounces various words: Oligocene (ollie GOH seen?), Poitiers, and many other words throughout. The result for me was that at certain moments, I had to mentally replay sentences in order to repair the author's original meaning. The issue is actually not a problem of having a bad narrator. Rather, it shows that the producers of the audio program did not pay sufficient attention to editorial detail--certainly not to the level warranted by the author's effort to produce an excellent popular science narrative.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- cbrann
- 09-08-06
Science writing at its very best
Wow. Someone once said to me, “If you can’t do the job without being a jerk, then you can’t do the job.” Ann Gibbons clearly spells out for us, the uninitiated, this: there are some serious jerks in paleoanthropology. Without naming names, let's just say that the quality of the insulting hyperbolic nutty criticisms and analogies documented here is only slightly superior to what you might find exchanged among some affluent US middle school students. So, do jerks help or inhibit science? Or, how much of a jerk do you have to be to be a successful paleoanthropologist? How does being a jerk help you find hominid fossils? Surprisingly, answers to these apparently ridiculous questions begin to reveal themselves as you listen. In all seriousness, this is an exciting book about an exciting time that is happening right now. I did not want the book to end, but when it did, I realized that it ended exactly in the present, and I was in the thick of it. Now I feel like I am part of this exciting, unprecedented, lucky, agonizing, contentious, rush to find where we came from. It really is that good. MB
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8 people found this helpful
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- JD
- 06-03-19
Worth Reading
Excellent The most up to date book I have read. It delves into the good bad and ugly of science.
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Overall
- A book reader
- 10-14-06
Interesting subject, poor execution
I'm interested in paleoanthropology, and the story of the discovery of the first hominids is a compelling one.
Unfortunately, Ann Gibbons doesn't tell the story all that well. There are a few too many characters in this story, and Gibbons seems to feel like she needs to give a mini-bio for everyone she introduces. This doesn't work because sometimes the profiles are longer than the part in the story the character plays. Very annoying. Gibbons also tries overly hard to bring the reader into the story, i.e. to take the reader there, with some pretty silly examples. This is not great science writing.
However, what's really bad is the narration. Rodman reads the book like she's reading a story to a Kindergarten class, complete with excitement in her voice at all the wrong parts. I would probably be able to recommend this book had the narration been better, but as it was I couldn't wait to finish with it because the reading was so grating.
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23 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Libby
- 01-11-11
Worst narration ever
In four years of listening, I have never written a review on Audible. Experience listening has also taught me that I am almost never bothered by narrators in the way many folks are. But the narrator on this is just abysmal-- with few exceptions, she pronounces almost every, single scientific word incorrectly. Since I am an anthropologist myself, it grated so hard on the ears I gave up and just read the book. I’m mostly concerned about listeners interested in paleoanthropology with no formal educational background in it. I can just see Audible listeners dropping references to “Homo hab-i-lee” at their cocktail parties (the “s” on the end of Homo habilis is not silent, Ms. Raudman). Ugh.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Michael McCormack
- 08-05-18
disappointing
The book lacked substance and the narrating was horrible. There was more information about the anthropologists personal lives than facts about the history and lineage of man. I couldn't get through the book let alone enjoy it. very disappointing.
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- Roger
- 01-23-14
An insider book
What would have made The First Human better?
Less mundane detail about the paleoanthropologists. The story lacked any interesting information for those not immersed in the field.
What was most disappointing about Ann Gibbons’s story?
It was boring. The topic is very interesting but this story was as uninteresting as a book about the lives of random office workers, accountants or other ordinary people. I was expecting more on the topic rather than the paleoanthropologists.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
The narration style was similar to those used by NPR correspondents. A quiet whispery voice that tended to drone on when you have a long narration. With the less than exciting story, the soft narration style contributed to nodding off.
What character would you cut from The First Human?
There were no characters to cut from this type of book.
Any additional comments?
Serious paleoanthropology students or researchers probably would enjoy the book. That is why I called it an "Insider's Book".
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