A Story of Us – A New Look at Human Evolution – Oxford University Press

It's time for a story of human evolution that goes beyond describing "ape-men" and talks about what women and children were doing. In a few decades, a torrent of new evidence and ideas about human evolution has allowed scientists to piece together a more detailed understanding of what went on thousands and even millions of years ago.We now know much more about the problems our ancestors faced, the solutions they found, and the trade-offs they made.The drama of their experiences led to the humans we are today: an animal that relies on a complex culture.We are a species that can - and does - rapidly evolve cultural solutions as we face new problems, but the intricacies of our cultures mean that this often creates new challenges. Our species' unique capacity for culture began to evolve millions of years ago, but it only really took off in the last few hundred thousand years.This capacity allowed our ancestors to survive and raise their difficult children during times of extreme climate ch