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Natural History Of Ourselves (2000)

by Hannah Holmes(Favorite Author)

3.74 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

184887040X (ISBN13: 9781848870406)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

review 1: This breezy though well-written look at humans through the lens of a naturalist was a lot of fun. It's not often that one has the opportunity to read about one's own species as another interesting animal. Like Holmes, I find humanity's evils a little easier to forgive when they are viewed in context of our animal heritage, and our altruism more noble. A solid, engaging, occasionally funny book. Recommended.
review 2: Innovative, funny, and fascinating. I guarantee you’ve never read anything like this. She explains the human body, physically and emotionally, in a creative and fun way, using the latest research. (I didn’t like her first book, Suburban Safari, nearly as much.) A few examples:P. 79 Where once humans were divided into just two camps–stoics and... more whiners–a Michigan neuroscientist now grants us three: val-vals, met-mets, and val-mets. Each category represents a different combination of a mother and father’s COMT gene. This gene comes in two varieties: good painkiller and not-so-good painkiller. One quarter of humans are val-vals, who got the painkiller version from each parent. Half are val-mets, with moderate pain control. And the final quarter are met-mets, with two lousy versions of the gene, which essentially allows pain to runroughshod through their brains. So if you whimper over splinters, you’re not a sissy, you’ve just been cheated by the Gene Fairy.P. 81 Some researchers speculate that the space-savvy male brain evolved because all the hunters with bad spatial skills got lost and died childless. less

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