As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So? - Bill Bryson

It is natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity — in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch.

Above all, what is oddest to the outsider is that Aborigines just aren't there.

Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven — corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats — account for 93 percent of all that humans eat,