My interest in human prehistory goes back to the early 1990s, when I read Jared Diamond’s classic The Third Chimpanzee. Another book I read around that time was Olaf Stapledon’s future history, Last and First Men, with its breath-taking vision of 18 successive human species, all very different from Homo sapiens yet, ultimately, sharing much of what makes us human.
For all volumes of literature devoted to human evolution and archaeology, I felt that something was missing: a single work covering the entire human past from the first apes to the first cities. I felt that such a book should be written for the non-specialist, while at the same time, sufficiently comprehensive in scope, rigorous in content, and well-referenced to be regarded as a serious contribution to the field.
Humans: From the Beginning is now in its fourth edition, reflecting the unstinting pace of new discoveries. It is accompanied by the first two books in the Prehistoric Investigations series – the original Prehistoric Investigations and Prehistoric Investigations 2: In Search of. The latter is an omnibus of twelve 12,000-word eBook short reads (also available separately). These books are far shorter than Humans: From the Beginning and are more aimed at the general reader, but are no less rigorous than the longer work.
My interest in astronomy goes back to my childhood. Astronomy: From the Beginning is an attempt to tie these two interests together by covering the history of astronomy from prehistoric times to Sir Isaac Newton.
The Short Guide to the Planets is a series of eBook short reads, covering the various planets (and ex-planets) of the Solar System.
Contact: christopher.seddon@iCloud.com