The Main Forks in Our Evolution

Did you know that our very distant ancestors once divided the world and competed for resources with mammal-like "shrew-are" creatures and plesiadapiforms, trying to secure their place in the sun?

Stanislav Drobyshevsky will serve as a guide for an imagined journey along the routes of evolution, where driopithecines and sivapithecines “played” their moves, and nimble tarsiers demonstrated impressive hunting skills.

The author explains how inconspicuous purgatorius managed to survive the age of dinosaurs and laid the groundwork for enormous primate diversity, while oreopithecines—trapped by island isolation—ultimately paid for it. Why did gigantopithecines go extinct despite their impressive size, and how did our human ancestors—proconsuls—manage to hold their ground?

On these pages, Kenyapithecus come to life, reaching Europe; Australopithecines, taking the first steps toward bipedalism; and the mysterious Denisovans, leaving traces in our genome. Drobyshevsky leads the reader through key turning points in evolutionary history—from the forests of the Paleocene to the savannas of the Pliocene—telling it all clearly and with humor. This is a book about how we learned to survive, interact, and think—and why understanding these lessons still matters today.