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Fiction Review by The Gravedigger
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12.20.09
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created by G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak
authors: various
This book recreates what the earlier forms of mankind looked like, from 7 million years ago to present day, by reconstructing from their bones and fossils. Each chapter explains what types of fossils were discovered (teeth, skull, skeleton) and where they were found. Based on this, and fossil remains of animals discovered in the same area, what they ate and how they walked. This is accompanied by a digital "photo" of what their appearance probably looked like, along with a docudrama slice-of-life tale of how they may have lived and behaved. While modern people may have common ancestors with these earlier humans, the majority of them may have branched out and been a parallel species. In fact, many of these different species inhabited the world at the same time such as the various types of Australopithecines, not to mention Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man millions of years later. I found one of the most interesting to be Homo Floresiensis (referred to as "The Hobbit" in the press), who lived 500,000 thousand years ago to 12,000 years ago on the Indonesian Island of Flores. This means this was the last time there were two human species on the planet.
If you are a creationist and believe mankind lived along with dinosaurs a few thousand years ago, like Fred Flintstone,, then this book is not for you. Otherwise, this is a fascinating story that puts our place in nature in perspective.
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Rating: nan out of 10.0 - votes cast total
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