Gorgeous and ethereal illustrations and a story that brings children into a state of connectedness with the universe makes this an amazing book for parents and teachers who want to instill in kids a deep appreciation for themselves, their community, and the need to protect this planet that we all reside.This remarkable evolution series, narrated by the Universe itself, concludes with this third book, the amazing story of mammals and humans. It picks up after From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth Story with the extinction of dinosaurs, and tells how tiny mammals survived and morphed into lots of new Earthlings—horses, whales and a kind of mammal with a powerful imagination—you! It's a story of chaos, creativity and heroes? the greatest adventure on Earth! And it's a personal story . . . about our bodies, our minds, our spirits. It's our story. As the president of the American Montessori Society said, "These books are alive with wonder, radiance, and deep relevance."A perfect series of kids' books for:teachers and librarians looking for a series of books that explains the story of our universe.Parents and teachers following Montessori's cosmic curriculum.Long time fans of Dawn Publications starting with the classic Sharing Nature With Children.

    Eleven imaginative, full-color pop-up spreads tell kids the story of how all physical reality came into existence, starting at the beginning of time with what scientists call the Big Bang--a cosmic explosion that got the universe started. Illustrations and easy text that follows portray the formation of the solar system and the gradual changes on the planet Earth that made it hospitable to life forms. Succeeding illustrations show the evolution of sea creatures, dinosaurs, and other prehistoric animals, culminating with the origin and development of human beings. Kids will be fascinated by the ingenious pop-up illustrations as they discover the story of literally everything that exists.

    While art historians have wrestled with these images and objects, very few scientists have weighed in on Paleolithic art as artifacts of a complex, living society. R. Dale Guthrie is one of the first to do so, and his monumental volume The Nature of Paleolithic Art is a landmark study that will change the shape of our understanding of these marvelous images.With a natural historian's keen eye for observation, and as one who has spent a lifetime using bones and other excavated materials to piece together past human behavior and environments, Guthrie demonstrates that Paleolithic art is a mode of expression we can comprehend to a remarkable degree and that the perspective of natural history is integral to that comprehension. He employs a mix of ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals to access these distant cultures and their art and artifacts. Guthrie uses innovative forensic techniques to reveal new information; estimating, for example, the ages and sexes of some of the artists, he establishes that Paleolithic art was not just the creation of male shamans.With more than 3,000 images, The Nature of Paleolithic Art offers the most comprehensive representation of Paleolithic art ever published and a radical (and controversial) new way of interpreting it. The variety and content of these images—most of which have never been available or easily accessible to nonspecialists or even researchers—will astonish you. This wonderfully written work of natural history, of observation and evidence, tells the great story of our deepest past.

    Capturing the essence of life in great civilizations of the past, each volume in the

     " Prehistoric World Books " combine dramatic, scientifically accurate color illustrations with a wealth of factual details based on archaeological findings to give young readers a vivid picture of the exotic succession of animals that inhabited the Earth in the prehistoric era. Dating back to perhaps 300 million years ago, with the earliest-known life forms, the six titles in this series carry the history of animal life forward to man-like creatures such as homo erectus, and finally to prehistoric homo sapiens, or human beings like ourselves, whose origins date back an estimated 200,000 years. Individual species are presented on two-page spreads that show large illustrations of the animal when it was alive, photos of reconstructed fossil skeletons, and a list of descriptive factual details. These books are great sources for elementary school class projects, or simply for fun reading.

    The archaeological finds included the remains of textiles, plants, and animals, and some female terra-cotta figures that suggested the existence of a "mother goddess" cult.The initial excavation was interrupted in 1965, and answers to the riddles of this Neolithic site remained unresolved until Ian Hodder initiated a new campaign of research in the 1990s. Described by Colin Renfrew as "one of the most ambitious excavation projects currently in progress, undertaken at one of the world's great archaeological sites," this has been a truly multidisciplinary undertaking, involving the participation of over one hundred archaeologists, scientists, and specialists. Hodder and his colleagues have established that this great site, dating back some 9,000 years, provides the key to understanding the most important change in human existence--the time when people moved into villages and towns, adopted farming as a way of life, and began to accept domination of one social group by another. Through meticulous excavation procedures and laboratory analyses, they peel back the layers of history to reveal how people lived and died and how they engaged with one another, with their environment, and with the spirit world.Full of insights into past lives and momentous events, "The Leopard's Tale" is superbly illustrated with images of the art, the excavations, and the people involved in this world-famous dig.