Try free for 30 days
-
Close Encounters with Humankind
- A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Anthropology
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for $24.37
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Buy it with
-
Babylon
- Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
- By: Paul Kriwaczek
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period.
-
Winning Arguments
- What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom
- By: Stanley Fish
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled with the wit and observational prowess that shaped Stanley Fish's acclaimed best seller, How to Write a Sentence, Winning Arguments guides listeners through the "greatest hits" of rhetoric. In this clever and engaging guide, Fish offers insight and outlines the crucial keys you need to win any debate, anywhere, anytime - drawn from landmark legal cases, politics, his own career, and even popular film and television.
-
-
Off topic?
- By Mlou on 16-10-2019
-
The Ascent of Humanity
- Civilization and the Human Sense of Self
- By: Charles Eisenstein
- Narrated by: Steve Wojtas
- Length: 27 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. He argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.
-
-
Destroy Erase Improve
- By Mike on 08-01-2018
-
The Consciousness Instinct
- Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
- By: Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
-
100 Turning Points in American History
- By: Alan Axelrod
- Length: Not Yet Known
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the 100 points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today.
-
Light of the Stars
- Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth
- By: Adam Frank
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Light of the Stars is science at the grandest of scales, and it tells a radically new story about what we are: one world in a universe awash in planets. Building on his widely discussed scientific papers and New York Times op-eds, astrophysicist Adam Frank shows that not only is it likely that alien civilizations have existed many times before, but also that many of them have driven their own worlds into dangerous eras of change.
-
-
The most important book that I’ve ever read.
- By Anonymous User on 08-01-2020
-
Babylon
- Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
- By: Paul Kriwaczek
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Civilization was born 8,000 years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place. In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of this land to life in vibrant detail, the author chronicles the rise and fall of power during this period.
-
Winning Arguments
- What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom
- By: Stanley Fish
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Filled with the wit and observational prowess that shaped Stanley Fish's acclaimed best seller, How to Write a Sentence, Winning Arguments guides listeners through the "greatest hits" of rhetoric. In this clever and engaging guide, Fish offers insight and outlines the crucial keys you need to win any debate, anywhere, anytime - drawn from landmark legal cases, politics, his own career, and even popular film and television.
-
-
Off topic?
- By Mlou on 16-10-2019
-
The Ascent of Humanity
- Civilization and the Human Sense of Self
- By: Charles Eisenstein
- Narrated by: Steve Wojtas
- Length: 27 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Eisenstein explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self. He argues that our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse.
-
-
Destroy Erase Improve
- By Mike on 08-01-2018
-
The Consciousness Instinct
- Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind
- By: Michael S. Gazzaniga
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do neurons turn into minds? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. In The Consciousness Instinct, the neuroscience pioneer Michael S. Gazzaniga puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness.
-
100 Turning Points in American History
- By: Alan Axelrod
- Length: Not Yet Known
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the 100 points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today.
-
Light of the Stars
- Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth
- By: Adam Frank
- Narrated by: Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Light of the Stars is science at the grandest of scales, and it tells a radically new story about what we are: one world in a universe awash in planets. Building on his widely discussed scientific papers and New York Times op-eds, astrophysicist Adam Frank shows that not only is it likely that alien civilizations have existed many times before, but also that many of them have driven their own worlds into dangerous eras of change.
-
-
The most important book that I’ve ever read.
- By Anonymous User on 08-01-2020
-
On Spice
- Advice, Wisdom, and History with a Grain of Saltiness
- By: Caitlin PenzeyMoog
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every home cook has thoughts on the right and wrong ways to use spices. These beliefs are passed down in family recipes and pronounced by television chefs, but where do such ideas come from? Many are little better than superstition, and most serve only to reinforce a cook's sense of superiority or cover for their insecurities. It doesn't have to be this way. These notes On Spice come from three generations of a family in the spice trade, and dozens upon dozens of their collected spice guides and stories.
-
She Has Her Mother's Laugh
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities....
-
-
Very long read
- By The Reader on 16-04-2021
-
Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology
- By: Sands Hall
- Narrated by: Sands Hall
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion - what she found intriguing and useful - and how she came to confront its darker sides.
-
-
An unusual Scientology memoir; beautifully written
- By Amazon Customer on 15-11-2020
-
Unthinkable
- An Extraordinary Journey Through the World's Strangest Brains
- By: Helen Thomson
- Narrated by: Helen Thomson
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How the mind works - everything from memory to emotion, navigation to creativity - explained in nine extraordinary human stories. Imagine...getting lost in a one-room flat; seeing auras; never forgetting a moment; a permanent orchestra in your head; turning into a tiger; life as an out-of-body experience; feeling other people's pain; being convinced you are dead; becoming a different person overnight. Our brains are far stranger than we think.
-
-
Gets you thinking
- By Belinda Nussbaum on 20-10-2021
-
The Blind Watchmaker
- Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
-
-
Heavy, heavy going
- By Steven on 27-04-2016
-
50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
- By: Guy P. Harrison
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maybe you know someone who swears by the reliability of psychics or who is in regular contact with angels. Or perhaps you're trying to find a nice way of dissuading someone from wasting money on a homeopathy cure. How do you find a gently persuasive way of steering people away from unfounded beliefs, bogus cures, conspiracy theories, and the like? Longtime skeptic Guy P. Harrison shows you how in this down-to-earth, entertaining exploration of commonly held extraordinary claims.
-
Undeniable
- Evolution and the Science of Creation
- By: Bill Nye
- Narrated by: Bill Nye
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sparked by a provocative comment to BigThink.com last fall, and fueled by a highly controversial debate with Creation Museum curator Ken Ham, Bill Nye's campaign to confront the scientific shortcoming of creationism has exploded in just a few months into a national crusade.
-
-
Awesome information and entertaining
- By Greg on 30-10-2017
-
Masters of the Planet
- The Search for Our Human Origins
- By: Ian Tattersall
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special.
-
My Kingdom for a Horse
- The War of the Roses (The Very, Very Short History of England Series, Book 5)
- By: Ed West
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From William Shakespeare’s series of history dramas, to Sir Walter Scott, and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—not to mention the smash-hit TV show Game of Thrones—the British civil war of 1455 to 1485 has inspired writers for centuries. Ed West’s My Kingdom for a Horse illuminates the bloody war fought for thirty long years between the descendants of King Edward III in a battle for the throne.
-
Fossil Men
- The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
- By: Kermit Pattison
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must-listen for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.
-
-
This is not a book about the science...
- By Ram Dayal on 06-08-2021
-
Life in Ancient Rome
- By: Lionel Casson
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lionel Casson paints a vivid portrait of life in ancient Rome - for slaves and emperors, soldiers and commanders alike - during the empire's greatest period, the first and second centuries AD.
-
Knocking on Heaven's Door
- How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World
- By: Lisa Randall
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall. The best-selling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics and cosmology.
Publisher's Summary
What can fossilized teeth tell us about our ancient life expectancy? What can big data on fossils reveal about farming's problematic role in human evolution? How can simple geometric comparisons of skull and pelvic fossils suggest an origin to our social nature?
In Close Encounters with Humankind, paleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee explores some of our biggest evolutionary questions from unexpected new angles. Through a series of entertaining, bite-sized chapters, we gain new perspectives into our first hominin ancestors, our first steps on two feet, our first forays into toolmaking and hunting, and of course our continuing evolution.
More from the same
What listeners say about Close Encounters with Humankind
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- John
- 15-09-2018
A different perspective of human ancestry
I was looking for a different perspective of human ancestry and I found it. However, I was also looking for up to date information. While this book was published in 2018 the book is a collection of essays that were previously published.
The book also supports a multi-regionalist model for modern humans, but without any attempt to fit this theory with recent genomic data. In the book the authors appeared to be less comfortable with genomic data, but this could just reflect their paleoanthropologist perspective.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Rami
- 17-07-2018
Hard topic, simple presentation
Hard topic presented simply. Verry intresting and for once I didnt want the book to end.
Verry well read.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- dudette
- 28-03-2021
dumbed down paleoanthropology
I am not a scientist at all, let alone an anthropologist or paleo-anthropologist. This book contained a lot of dumb statements that seemed geared to pander to woke college professors, administrators, and students, at the expense of honest science. Parts were interesting, but my enjoyment of the book was marred by the cringe-inducing wokeness and political correctness. Just dumb.
16 Best Audiobooks by Aboriginal Authors
Across genres, there’s no shortage of brilliant titles from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers of Australia.



16 Audiobooks Full of Life Hacks to Live By
Looking to improve yourself mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually? This is where to start.



14 Feel-Good Audiobooks to Brighten Up Your Day
The Audible library is packed with feel-good audiobooks that will lighten the soul and fill the heart with joy.


