Ape Man

A follow-up to the award-winning "Dinosaur!", this book ties in with a four-part Anglo-American television series on the story of evolution and of the people who have devoted their lives to discovering the truth about our origins.

It is based on interviews with scientists throughout the world. Since Darwin dropped his bombshell of evolutionary theory, people have been fascinated by our journey of development from ape to man.

The struggle to answer the many questions that are raised by this theory have led scientists down blind alleys, into ferocious disputes, and even to stage an outright fraud.

No one has conclusively traced a clear line of inheritance all the way from our last ancestor in common with chimpanzees through to homo sapiens, and the book brings together the arguments and the ideas, to help readers to understand why we are the way we are today.

It describes the key features which set us apart from chimpanzees; what made the earliest humans stand up straight and walk on two legs; why we developed our large and powerful brains; when and why we started to use language; what made us begin to create pictures, sculptures and symbols; and what it is that makes us human.