A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters

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Our ancestors have ranged through some pretty… weird phases, let me tell you. All in all, a thoroughly engaging read, complete with ‘the moral of this story’ towards the end. With dramatic flair, Henry Gee’s sweeping new book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, tells the 4-billion-year story of life on this planet and how it has been repeatedly shaped by geological, climatic, and atmospheric forces. Trained as a paleontologist, Gee tells life’s history using the framework of the fossil record, offering insights from the related fields of ecology and physiology. Interwoven as it is with geology and climate, life evolves the way Ernest Hemingway said we go broke: “gradually and then suddenly” (1). Readers should be chastened at his conclusion, shared by most scientists, that Homo sapiens is making its habitat—the Earth—progressively less habitable and will become extinct in a few thousand years. Gee writes lucid, accessible prose."

About 2.5 million years ago, Homo erectus arose, a territorial savannah predator, deadly thanks to two traits: it was a powerful long-distance runner and a social animal. From this lineage, Homo sapiens evolved. Humanity’s first attempt at worldwide dispersal failed, shattered by the cold of an ice age 200,000 years ago. Confined to an oasis in what is now the Kalahari Desert, humankind nearly went extinct. We, as a species, are just as fragile as all the others, reminds Gee.If you have already watched David Attenborough’s Life/Origin of life or Neil deGrasse’s Cosmos docuseries like me, then this book will act as a fantastic recap of the complex history of life on earth. If you haven’t watched the above-mentioned docuseries, then this book will be an absolute delight for anybody interested in natural history. Also, I highly recommend watching these awesome docuseries in the soothing voice of Mr. Attenborough and Mr. Tyson. in chapter 3 for example, author uses a tons of extinct species to tell facts of evolutionary history, it becomes difficult to imagine them in a sentence of information, most of them you might have never heard of them. so it made sense to constantly look at Google images to see what he was telling about. majority of facts won't even stay in your head as a lot of these species won't live more than a sentence or two

The book draws on the latest scientific understanding, much of it first published in Nature, for “a tale of survival and persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life exists”. I am a Paleoanthropology Student, so far with two degrees, in Anthropology and Human Behavioral Science, pursuing my B.A and then my PhD I love to read (like a lot) and write, I love my family, and I adore anthropology! Remember, never stop exploring and never stop learning! There is always more to learn! One thought on “ A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters by Dr. Henry Gee, aReview!”With authority, humor, and detail, Gee, a paleontologist and senior editor of Nature, traces the progression of life on earth from its initial stirrings...readers will find this eye-opening book compelling for years to come." This book is like a summary of Campbell biology with a lot of lengthy walls of texts, namedrops, and NO illustrations.