“But let's not focus on what makes them distinct; to pull off our prediction, we need to focus on what different creatures share.’’
From the first pages of the book, the author made it clear that his purpose was not to make the reader think about the differences between the species but rather to focus on what they had similar. By pointing out this in the beginning, the author made the lecture more easy to understand and presented the purpose of the book from the start and so there are no questions regarding the purpose of the book.
“Seeing Lucy, we can understand our history as highly advanced primates. Seeing Tiktaalik is seeing our history as fish.’’
Even though the narrator presented the purpose of his book from the beginning, he knew that it would be hard for some to understand it so he compared a less known example to a well-known example to make the reader understand the meaning of his book. The author mentioned Lucy, a skeleton found in Ethiopia that shows who our ancestors were. Many people who are passionate about evolutionism know about Lucy and her importance but do not know about the importance of Tiktaalik, the fish fossil found that proves that fish are our ancestors and are an important link to understand how we evolved and came to be.
“Do the facts of our ancient history mean that humans are not special or unique among living creatures? Of course not.’’
The author anticipated that some people would look at his findings and believe that the author wanted to stress the idea that humans are just like every other living animal and have nothing special. The author dismissed this idea and showed how even though we have common ancestors, the humans are still special among the other species and cannot be compared with other animals. Through his book, the author did not want to show how normal humans are but rather wanted to stress how the process through which humans developed is an truly exceptional one.
