"Rich and multifaceted.O'Connor brings her subjects to life in a delightful manner." - Publishers Weekly There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book―devouring it makes for a good start." - Kirkus Reviews Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, depression and PTSD. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus.
Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future.
O'Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision―especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. In stories of sixteenth-century galleon excavations, panther-tracking in Florida swamps, ancient African rainforests, Neanderthal tool-making, and cryogenic DNA banks, O'Connor investigates the philosophical questions of an age in which we "play god" with earth's biodiversity.Įach chapter in this beautifully written book focuses on a unique species-from the charismatic northern white rhinoceros to the infamous passenger pigeon-and the people entwined in the animals' fates.At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. Paradoxically, the more we intervene to save species, the less wild they often become.
O'Connor explores the extreme measures scientists are taking to try and save them, from captive breeding and genetic management to de-extinction. In a world dominated by people and rapid climate change, species large and small are increasingly vulnerable to extinction.
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