Summary of Tom Higham's The World Before Us

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Palaeolithic era, which is a key phase of late human evolution from 300,000 to 40,000 years ago, is a period when we, Homo sapiens, became us. This period has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, and what we know now about our own deep past is very different from what we once thought. #2 The Denisovans are one strand of a much bigger story. What we know about the evolution of our genus, Homo, has changed dramatically over the last two decades. We will learn about the different groups of humans that existed 50,000 years ago, and why we are the last ones left. #3 I have always been fascinated by the past, and I am very fortunate to work at the University of Oxford, which is one of the founding archaeological science facilities in the world. #4 The scientific arm of archaeology is responsible for an increasing majority of all publications in the field. Radiocarbon dating, the game-changing chronometric method that heralded the birth of archaeological science in the early 1950s, is used in over a hundred laboratories around the world.