The Last Four Million Years: Life at the Dawn of Mankind - Paperback

This fully illustrated account of evolution and mankind's impact on planet Earth is the second book in the Test of Time trilogy, following "It's Been Four Billion Years: the Story of Life on Earth a Million Years at a Time." All three books are short enough that they're intended to be read in a single sitting, but give a sobering perspective on mankind -- told from a plant and animal point of view -- that unfolds with the regularity of a metronome. Each turn of a page ticks off precisely the same number of years in the history of life on earth. In the first book, it was twenty million years per page; in this book, it's twenty thousand years per page; in the third book, its twenty years per page. Like the rest of the trilogy, this book is a rare combination of science and art looking at deep history, with the magnifying glass in this book held up to it a thousand times more closely than in the first book of the triology, and then again, a thousand times deeper than it is in the third.. Science, poetry, deep history, zoology, anthropology, graphic art all in one, the trilogy provides a thoughtful, sobering look at life on planet Earth for the general reader as well as perfect trilogy for classroom teaching that combines science, language arts, graphic arts, and planetary philosophy. 250 pages, narrated by non-humans against vivid, bleed-to-bleed illustrations. Extensive endnotes and bibliography.