Human evolution boiled down to 4 factors

Review of Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time by Gaia Vince

This is an ambitious and fun book that avoids reducing such a vast subject to some single-factor deterministic model. We are all sick of the nature/nurture dichotomy, i.e. that either our genetic heritage or our life experience is the underlying cause of what we become. It’s obviously a more complex mix, which is the theme of Vince’s book. To be clear, …