Being who and what we are, it is easy for us to make the mistake of assuming that all evolutionary steps on Earth were made to eventually create us. However, if you think about it, all evolutionary steps were made on Earth to create not only us but all the things we live with on Earth.
This type of homo-centric views appears more easily when we follow the evolutionary time line. This is what Richard Dawkins tries to avoid by tracing back the evolutionary steps starting with us, the human.
This tracing back used to rely on the physiological comparison. However, with the recent advancements in DNA/molecular analysis, the evolutionary relationships between the species were based on the molecular evidences.
Frankly, there were so many names on this book that I hardly remembers any. It was certainly interesting to follow the steps backwards learning more about our distant relatives, though.
The only thing is that Mr. Dawkins seems to inject a lot of his political and social commentaries into the book. I felt that this made the book less academic, and sometimes too defensive.
Also, I felt that paleo-biology (?) has so few evidences and so many unknowns that how much of these theories and conjectures (which are sometimes not stated so clearly) I can really rely on.
Nonetheless, it was an interesting read albeit too long. :p
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