I certainly do. I wish there were more authentic movies about it. The last thing we got was 10,000 BC which was entertaining and visually impressive but that’s about it.
shareYes. I love watching well done documentaries about archaeology and anthropology. There's not much in the way of movies.
shareI'm amazed that the average life expectancy wasn't 20-years-old in that time.
shareSeriously. Between disease, hunting, inter- and intra-tribal wars, you'd think so.
shareI can't tell you how many times my health has been saved by modern medication. They must have went absolutely insane in cavemen times.
shareIf it weren't for modern medicine I'd have died several times by now. Tomorrow I'll be 55 and amazed to have made it this far, considering how often I put my life in jeopardy.
sharei used to be quite obsessive about human evolution, inhaled books & docs. i've drifted away from the topic in the last 10-15 years, i guess. most of the details i learned through all that reading have faded away.
but certainly, whenever anyone plays the game of 'what era would you want to go back and visit if time travel were a real thing,' my answer has to be 'go back 50, 100, 200 thousand years and see just what we were like, how we lived.
i'm actually more obsessed with ants now, as odd as that may sound. i think they're the most fascinating little creatures, and if you put me on the spot and asked me if i'd rather spend an afternoon looking at ants or hanging out with the average human, i'd pick the ants every time.
Agree with your last sentence. Give me some good recs for docs and books.
sharemy favourite books on ants are:
journey to the ants - bert holldobler and eo wilson. wilson is certainly the world's most famous myrmecologists and one of the most famous biologists. i think this book is the best one i've read on ants, and it's absolutely a model of popular science writing.
adventures among ants -mark moffat - the text in this book isn't quite as grand as wilson's, but the selling point isn't the writing. it's moffat's incredible pictures.
the lives of ants - laurent keller -this was my introduction, the book that got me obsessed with the topic. as science writing, again it's not as great as wilson's, but it's fascinating all the way through, the kind of read that will make you stop and tell other people about the amazing thing you just learned.
there are some great docs and clips on yt, including a very good bio of wilson. i'm just about to start a movie, but i'll come back afterwards and provide some links.
Lol I meant docs and books on human evolution, I was just agreeing w your last sentence that I would rather be around ants than most people.
shareoh! haha, you should read about ants too! some people think it's kinda weird that i'm obsessed with ants, but i think it's kinda weird not to be obsessed with ants!
some of these are fairly obvious, but obvious for a reason:
richard dawkins - the blind watchmake & the selfish gene
oren harman - the price of altruism
jared diamond - why is sex fun
daniel dennett - darwin's dangerous idea
neil shubin - your inner fish
robert wright - the moral animal
michael shermer - why darwin matters
henry harpending - the 10000 year explosion
these are the ones i remember really enjoying off the top of my head. i'll dig into my closet later and go through my books. i'm sure there are tons i'm forgetting.
others i just thought of:
who's in charge - free will and the science of the brain - michael gazzaniga. not strictly an evolutionary topic, but a very interesting look at how we think, how are thoughts are authored, etc.
the brain - rob desalle & ian tattersall - the evolution of the brain.
catching fire - how cooking made us human - richard wrangham
wonderful life - the burgess shale and the nature of history - stephen jay gould - pre-human evolution, and it gets a bit technical at times, but very well written & a very rewarding read.
I'd like to kill two birds with one stone. Can you recommend any books about pre-history ant civilizations?
sharei haven't read a book specific to that topic, though wilson's book touches briefly on ant evolution (short version - related to wasps, have existed as a species at least 90m years). i'm not sure there is a book published on that topic meant for the general public.
there are certainly articles out there that are available, though most of them are meant for academics and don't make for the most thrilling reading - at least not to me.
see this one for eg:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982213010567
When I was a kid I read a book called City Under the Back Steps. It's about two kids who get shrunken down to the size of ants and end up in a colony. Two, I think -- black and red. The author really knew her ants, because I learned a lot of fascinating things about them reading that book.
I used to spend hours watching them. The other kids at my school thought I was nuts for picking up the red ants, but I never got bitten.
They are fascinating.
i could tell there was something i liked about you!
i've never heard of city under... until now. i wish i'd had your experience & read it as a kid. unfortunately it looks like it's out of print. i just checked on amazon & it looks like it's only available from 2nd hand sellers, starting at the perfectly reasonable price of $398.00.
Ha, likewise! It must be our unknown until now shared love of ants :)
Apparently I'm not the only one who loved that book. Seems it's become a highly sought after little-known classic. Yikes, only $400! Too bad. I think you'd enjoy it, and I'd like to read it again.
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i'm going to be swinging by our library tomorrow afternoon, & i'm going to talk to someone about that while i'm there. i'm not sure that canada's intralibrary system is as well developed as the us's, but it can't hurt to pose the question. thanks.
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Most Hollywood movies have Jewish / Christian undertones, so an authentic movie on evolution is off the menu. Instead we have The Croods and it's sequel The Croods 2 in 2020.
shareYes I do. The discovery of a small percentage of ancestral Neanderthal, Denisovan and still another unknown hominid's DNA in modern day humans is very interesting. Also I don't believe the sanctioned theory that all of us are descended from humans who came out of Africa 60,000 years ago. The Australian Aborigines for one believe they have been in Australia for much longer than that and there are some tantalizing hints that they may be right.
But how does someone credibly elucidate us on PRE-history? Not dissing the subject, but I'm thinking it's all up for conjecture as to how humans may have lived before we have any way of knowing. Perhaps the lives of Native Americans as the New World was being discovered would give us a clue? Certainly something to think about and study but this was the first thing that came to my mind.
shareI read somewhere that Native Americans are descended from Eurasians and not East Asians. And looking at the old photos of them that looks to be true in many cases.