Almost Human, Lee Berger
Almost Human, Lee Berger
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Almost Human
The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story

Author: Lee Berger, John Hawks

Narrator: Donald Corren

Unabridged: 6 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/25/2018


Synopsis

This first-person narrative about an archaeological discovery is rewriting the story of human evolution. A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger’s own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the twenty-first century.In 2013, Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, caught wind of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators—men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave forty feet underground. With this team of “underground astronauts,” Berger made the discovery of a lifetime: hundreds of prehistoric bones, including entire skeletons of at least fifteen individuals, all perhaps two million years old. Their features combined those of known prehominids like Lucy, the famous Australopithecus, with those more human than anything ever before seen in prehistoric remains. Berger’s team had discovered an all new species, and they called it Homo naledi.The cave quickly proved to be the richest prehominid site ever discovered, full of implications that shake the very foundation of how we define what makes us human. Did this species come before, during, or after the emergence of Homo sapiens on our evolutionary tree? How did the cave come to contain nothing but the remains of these individuals? Did they bury their dead? If so, they must have had a level of self-knowledge, including an awareness of death. And yet those are the very characteristics used to define what makes us human. Did an equally advanced species inhabit Earth with us, or before us? Berger does not hesitate to address all these questions.Berger is a charming and controversial figure, and some colleagues question his interpretation of this and other finds. But in these pages, this charismatic and visionary paleontologist counters their arguments and tells his personal story: a rich and readable narrative about science, exploration, and what it means to be human.

About Lee Berger

Lee Berger is a paleoanthropologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence. He is best known for his discovery of early human ancestors, including Australopithecus sediba in 2008 and Homo naledi in 2013. Berger is an award-winning author, speaker, and research professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg

About John Hawks

John Hawks is a paleoanthropologist who has been working alongside Lee Berger on the Rising Star Expedition. He is the Vilas-Borghesi Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

About Donald Corren

Donald Corren is an audiobook narrator and a New York actor with leading credits on and Off-Broadway, as well as numerous television appearances. On Broadway, he costarred with Judy Kaye in the critically acclaimed production of Souvenir, and replaced Harvey Fierstein in the seminal production of Torch Song Trilogy. His Off-Broadway appearances include The Soap Myth, Dietrich & Chevalier, The Last Sunday in June, Stephen Sondheim’s Saturday Night, and the original New York production of Tomfoolery. His television credits include eight seasons as forensic tech Medill on NBC’s Law & Order, as well as his current role as Dr. Kurian on Syfy’s Z Nation.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin

Paleoanthropologists, as a rule, spend their professional lifetimes in wishful pursuit of just one significant new hominid identification - Lee Berger has two. “It just shows that you can never stop looking. Just because something has been studied for years doesn't mean that it can't still tell us ne......more

Published the summer after I earned my PhD, “Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery That Changed Our Human Story” is a fascinating story. I remember vividly how Berger’s discovery led to a Facebook announcement encouraging students to participate in his research while I......more

Goodreads review by Carlos

Ok if you guys don’t know I am an anthropology major so books like this really speak to me , a couple of years ago the paleo anthropology world was rocked when the discovery of Homo naledi was made public , here was a whole different kind of Homo who up to now had not been discovered, you can imagin......more

Goodreads review by Erin

Loved this account of the past 20 years of our fossil discovery and understanding of human evolution, culminating with Rising Star, an archeological dig that captured my attention as a PBS/Nova TV presentation when it debuted. I watched in awe, at the time, as a team of women scientists documented a......more