Title: A letter to Layla : travels to our deep past and near future /
Authors: Koval, Ramona, 1954-
Year: 2020
Subjects: Koval, Ramona, Travel.; Koval, Ramona,; Human evolution Popular works.; Human beings; Human beings History.; Grandparent and child; Letters; Human ecology Forecasting.; Sociobiology; Technological forecasting; Climatic changes Effect of human beings on; Climatic changes Effect of human beings on; Grandparent and child; Human beings; Human ecology Forecasting; Human evolution; Letters; Sociobiology; Technological forecasting; Travel
Abstract: How might the origins of our species inform the way we think about our planet? At a point of unparalleled crisis, can human ingenuity save us from ourselves? Much-loved writer Ramona Koval travels the globe in a quest for answers, and encounters the unexpected. She talks to an eminent paleo-archaeologist over a two-million-year-old skull in the Republic of Georgia, meets the next generation of robots in Berlin, attends a festival against death in California and explores an ice-age cave in southern France, speaking with the world's leading authority on cave art. Between these and other adventures she returns to her ever-engaging granddaughter Layla, whose development in infancy spurs Koval to find out what makes us human, what separates us from the other apes. Full of revealing exchanges with scientists and writers whose knowledge of the past and visions for the future could hold the key to our next evolution, A Letter to Layla will surprise and delight in equal measure.
Contents: Introduction: How nature works -- Part I. Chapter 1: Aliens from planet Earth -- Chapter 2: I have a question -- Chapter 3: This toothless hominim -- Chapter 4: But stories are not science -- Chapter 5: The usual sorts of romantic nonsense -- Chapter 6: Taming the ogre -- Chapter 7: Who knows what's in there? -- Chapter 8: Do you know who I am? -- Part II. Chapter 9: The league of immortals -- Chapter 10: The home for incurables -- Chapter 11: A better life, a better world -- Chapter 12: Strangers in a strange land -- Chapter 13: A bicycle made of porcelain -- Postscript: Fasten your seatbelts -- Notes and further reading -- Acknowledgements.