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Overview of the Series
From the very beginning, over four million years ago, the fossil record reveals that the flow of hominid evolution has always been episodic rather than gradual. Due to some unpredictable perturbations in the global climate, during the late Pliocene, the African landmass witnessed a dramatic shrinkage of habitable woodlands, which induced the early humans living there to adapt or face extinction. The record shows that they not only succeeded but also flourished, by displaying true innovation, superior cognitive skills and an imaginative manipulation of their habitat.
Our remotest ancestors were essentially neither apes nor human but possessed physical adaptations that are unfortunately no longer found in any primate species living today. They were neither as talented in the trees as the great apes nor as facile on terra firma as us humans.
But…as the evolution of the human lineage clearly shows through mounting fossil evidence, there are many ways to be a hominid and that our way is just one of them. As pointed out earlier, the hominid evolutionary history has not been one of gradual continuous improvement but quite sporadic at best throughout the past four million years.
In fact, all of us modern Homo sapiens, for all our remarkable capacities, represent just one of the many twigs on the prickly bush of hominid evolution. We are definitely not the sole occupants of a pedestal, which all other primates have aspired to but failed to reach.
Book 3 - Just Released !
In this riveting third episode of the five-part Hominid series, Dr. Brelvi delves into the pre-verbal world of our early ancestors living 2.2 million years ago.
Zak and friends, along with Dr. Abu Baqr, an intrepid Arab paleontologist from Khartoum, explore the wild Sudd swamps of southeastern Sudan.
Over the span of ten action-packed days, the team explores the exotic tribal culture of the MasakinTiwal dwelling today in the Nuba Mountains; clamber up the acrid slopes of Kinyeti, a dormant volcano inhabited by vicious baboons; uncover a trail of human-like footprints left behind by an ancestral human family; witness a violent encounter between two rival clans of Zimba Headhunters and navigate the turbid waters of a croc-infested swamp encircling a freshwater lake choked full of papyrus reeds.
Throughout the narrative, Dr. Brelvi flits back and forth between the daily hazards of hominid existence in the dim reaches of pre-history and the potentially fatal dangers lurking in the murky swamps of Lotagipi for Zak and his team as they blaze an intriguing trail through human anthropology.
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Book 1
Through this exciting and fact-based narrative, Dr. Brelvi has indeed proven that innovative scientific exploration is equally possible even while vacationing, deep within the wild jungles of Dahng.
Book 2
In this book, Zak and his team mount a 10-day action-packed expedition, deep in the Congo Basin accompanied by Dr. Mbusa, an intrepid, pygmypaleoanthropologist from Cambridge , England.
Our remotest ancestors were essentially neither apes nor human but possessed physical adaptations that are unfortunately no longer found in any primate species living today. They were neither as talented in the trees as the great apes nor as facile on terra firma as us humans.
