Last Ape Standing, Walters - B--

                                          This is brief bit of pop-paleoanthropology that tells the seven million year story of the 27 proto-human species that have inhabited the planet.  The author devises a calendar that converts all of human evolution to a one year period and provides insight and background to the twenty-six species that preceded us.  My single most important takeaway is a confirmation of a hunch I had 25-30 years ago. Around the time of the publication of the book 'Lucy' at the height of the discussions about the Rift Valley, the Leakey's, the anti-Leakey's, the out of Africa theories etc. I remember thinking that there was an awful lot of conclusiveness based on bits of fossilized bone.  The increasing sophistication of dna testing has blown the entire school of study out of the water. The elaborate family trees and discussions of where this australo____  or that homo____  group fell has been upended.  It's pretty clear that there was extensive overlap all over the planet, and most striking of all, we share genes with the Neanderthals.  The Neanderthals were here for 200,000 years and overlapped with us (we think) for 25,000 years.  They were primarily in Europe, and we were down to a few hundred souls in southern Africa when we started our march toward the future.  They were bigger than us, stronger than us, and even had a larger brain than we do. Nonetheless, we out-survived them and, lo and behold, apparently mated with them. Most of us carry 1-4% of Neanderthal dna in us. Going back to that calendar, our arrival 70,000 years ago translates to a start date of 12/27.