Being Human How Our Biology Shaped World History

About this book

We are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today.

But we're also deeply flawed. Our bodies break, choke and fail, whether we're kings or peasants. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Our psychological biases have been at the root of terrible decisions in both war and peacetime.

This extraordinary contradiction is the essence of what it means to be human – the sum total of our frailties and our faculties. And history has played out in the balance between them. Now, for the first time, Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this unique, capricious and fragile nature. He explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies and our wars, and how it continues to challenge and define our progress.

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Biography

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster, and also an Honorary Research Associate at University College London (UCL). He is the author of the bestselling books The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch and Origins: How the Earth Made Us, which has been translated into 26 languages. He writes for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist. Copies of The Knowledge exist on the surface of the Moon, and in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.