A well pitched and informative overview of the current knowledge around the beginnings of our own species and those that came before or coexisted with us. The level of detail is just right for me and the terminology is well explained without being patronising, which is a tough gig to achieve. The information is divided up into manageable chunks and kept my interest well. I would, perhaps, have appreciated some accompanying visuals for illustrative purposes but otherwise cannot fault the writing style or content. I particularly enjoyed the projections and predictions for the future including the topic of whether and how we as a species are continuing to adapt and evolve. Truly thought provoking and fascinating stuff.

Sarah Wild has created a fascinating in-depth investigation into our origins as humans!!

Having read multiple books on human evolution with long, monotonous words that simply don't captivate non-professionals, I'm glad to say this book isn't one of them! The language used is beginner friendly, easily understandable and has explanations for the more ambiguous vocabulary that none of us has ever seen before.

This short history is organised chronologically into bite sized chunks and accompanied by simple yet detailed diagrams. I particularly loved the information/narrative boxes that were dispersed between the pages. They added extra facts and aided understanding, as well as breaking up large amounts of text during some of the heavier topics.

Wild has successfully 'painted a history of the world using bones'.

Thank you to the publisher and the author for my digital review copy. :)

At the beginning of this book, the author states, "The aim of this book is to break the complex human story into bite-sized chunks, to highlight the broad trends and the major disagreements--and there are many disagreements...I have also tried to highlight how much our understanding of human origins has changed--and continues to change--and how, in some ways, palaeoanthropology showcases some of the best features of scientific inquiry..." (p6)

Does she succeed at the task she has set for herself? Indeed she does! She skillfully weaves the many threads of the story of human origins into a very readable, informative, fascinating narrative. Along the way, some threads get dropped and new ones picked up as more evidence becomes available. The search for the definitive story of how we--Homo sapiens sapiens--became the last homo species left will probably never be completely understood. The clues are random and necessarily fragmentary. We only have what turns up in the archaeological record. Then there is the interpretation of what is found, which often leads to disagreement between scientists. There is broad agreement that anatomically modern humans have been around for about 300,000 years, but how we got to that point and what happened to the other human species is still being explored. One 'fun fact' in the book was that Homo sapiens is the only hominin species (the lineage of species that diverged from chimpanzees 6 to 7 million years ago and resulted in us) to have a chin, as far as scientists know, and they don't know why.

This book is a great overview of the current state of thinking about human origins. It explains things without getting deep into jargon--general readers will find the book fascinating, highly readable, and informative. My one quibble was the explanatory boxes that were placed in the middle of the text. They provided important information, but the placement did interrupt the narrative flow for me, so I ended up just reading each chapter, then going back to read the text within the boxes. That's a minor issue, though, and about organization, not the excellent book itself. I highly recommend this book.