Us

By: Jeremy DeSilva

The award-winning author of First Steps returns with a revelatory tour of the latest scientific discoveries in archaeology and paleontology to challenge the idea of human exceptionalism, presenting a more complex—and fascinating—portrait of Us: who came before us, and what of us comes from them?

As our knowledge and understanding of the past has deepened, one thing has remained constant: our belief that we humans are special. But recent scientific discoveries in the fossil record challenge this notion.

Our species did not experience some magical leap forward from ape-like ancestor to sentient being, Jeremy DeSilva argues. In Us, he uses the latest fossil, genetic, and archaeological discoveries to dismantle the myth of human exceptionalism, showing how traits we prize as uniquely human—from creating art to feeling empathy—have deep roots in our extinct relatives and primate cousins. What makes us human is in fact a suite of characteristics patched together through cultural diffusion, biological evolution, and the genetic absorption of Neandertals, Denisovans, and other non-sapiens cousins into our gene pool. Some abilities we inherited; some were borrowed and refined. But very few are truly ours.

Witty and compelling, Us takes us to the discovery sites of extraordinary human fossils and the scientists who are unearthing them; to molecular laboratories squeezing ancient DNA from half-a-million-year-old fossils, and atom-smashing facilities where high-powered X-rays look deep within the bones of long extinct ancestors. It reveals how they communicated, worked together, and solved problems—strategies that helped them survive and that may provide important clues for overcoming our ecological challenges.

We are at a new dawn in understanding human evolution. Us brings us face-to-face with our ancestors as never before. It is a vivid, humbling, and profoundly connected view of who we are and where we come from: a new story of Us.