BOOKS | SCIENCE
Being Human by Lewis Dartnell review — has biology shaped history?
The idea that our past is explained by our bodies is entertaining but factually loose
The Sunday Times
Habsburg jaws: the Spanish kings Charles II and Philip IV
ALAMY
I loved Lewis Dartnell’s previous two books. The first, The Knowledge, tells you what you would need to know if civilisation collapsed and you wanted to rebuild it. It is stuffed with learning, yet light as anything. The second, Origins, studies how physical geography has shaped history. It is pacey and bold in scope.
So I had high expectations for this, the third in Dartnell’s loose trilogy of “big history” books — grand narratives that seem to explain everything. This is also a return to home turf: Dartnell trained as a biologist, and here he considers how human biology has affected history. Or, as he puts it, he takes a “deep dive” into “how our fundamental humanness has expressed itself in our cultures,
