A Times Best Book of 2019
"Beautifully written... At her best Vince takes dizzying leaps, making connections between archaeology, anthropology, genetics and psychology. She is especially good on the delicate interplay between genes, environment and culture. Vince steps with lightness." —The Times
"A wondrous, visionary work." —Tim Flannery
"This book goes from the Big Bang to the Hundred Thousand Genome Project to make a convincing case that Homo sapiens has become a super-organism. I learned a lot from it and so will you." —Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics UCL
How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny.
What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of
hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Readers of Sapiens
will say a cognitive revolution -- a dramatic evolutionary change that altered
our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones -- caused a cultural
explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern
humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and
culture that goes back into deep time. She explains how, through four key
elements -- fire, language, beauty, and time -- our species diverged from the
evolutionary path of all other animals, unleashing a compounding process that
launched us into the Space Age and beyond. Provocative and poetic, Transcendence
shows how a primate took dominion over nature and turned itself into something
marvelous.
