Who are we? It is a question indeed - and thank you for wondering about it too, joining me as I try to pursue the question. Your companionship is so welcome.

Actually it is many questions. Who are we, we humans? where did we come from? are we separate and distinct from all other species or might we understand ourselves better if we see ourselves in perspective, in relation to other species of the past or present in this beautiful earth that we inhabit?

In the present crises of our planet these questions are more and more pressing. There is now an impressive range of books in response, such as Harari’s striking Sapiens and Homo deus. They  consider the dawn of history, the destiny of humankind and - perhaps most challenging of all - our responsibility for planet earth.

The present book is both a complement and a riposte to these accounts. It is understandable, indeed up to a point right, to consider the world from our own perspective , humanly, our eyes firmly fixed on ourselves. 

But in our current predicament we need to go further as well, to look more widely. We need in particular to look back to the time when millions and millions of years ago that great meteor struck, the world’s creatures changed, and the avine pterodactyl species started to emerge. They are with us still, now as those talented creatures we know as birds.

As becomes clear in this book they are indeed different from humans ( you need only glance at the pictures here, or, better, around you). But - this is the salient point - as the present account shows birds also have far far more in common with us than is usually recognised.

 This has two results. 

First, it helps to set human life in perspective. Perhaps after all we are not quite the unique distinctive species we regularly see ourselves as, the unquestioned Lords of the Earth? Others were here first with comparable, though not identical, skills and characteristics.

Second, remember that birds have lived on this earth and developed their skills and - as we shall see - their highly wrought culture, millions and millions of years before the emergence of human beings, and then in the early years of human history lived in close interaction with them - considering all this it is right to ask what the effect of this close conjunction might have been?

It was a long time ago! So any conclusions may have to be, in part at least, speculation - but actually no more speculative than other accounts of early human history and with arguably better evidence, for it is all around us. It seems inescapable that we should at least ask whether human beings , themselves blessedly innovative and learning beings, might not have learned much from, or at least have been in part inspired by, some, maybe many, of the practices they saw among birds. 

It is not foolish to look at how their evolution compares with that of the human species or wonder whether, here millions of years before we humans emerged from the sea or wherever, the birds might have proved a model for humans to have learned something, copied something, from them. Was it birds who discovered and cherished music for us to emulate? And their lives as social beings, in their joint parenting, intricate home/ nest building, tool using, navigation, coordinated action, territoriality, joy in play, communication, adaptation to climate change and more ? Have they shown , do they still have, a more harm-free care of the earth than we humans, something from which we might learn?

Let us then take a look at birds, those amazing, talented, creatures, here millions of years before us and perhaps - this is the surprise - with more in common with humans than we ever suspected. There is much learn.

What started off these thoughts of mine? Read on. You are entitled to ask …