Book Review: The Dawn Of Humankind, And Charles Foster’s New Book, ‘Being A Human: Adventures In Forty Thousand Years Of Consciousness’ Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness is a discourse on the sentience we may have had as early humans and that, over millennia, we’ve somehow roasted into a crisp. It's a lesson in what to watch for in nature. It’s funny. It’s moving. It’s mind-expanding.