Tesla Monson
Tesla Monson, PhD, is an award-winning scientist and professor of Anthropology. She travels the world to visit museum collections and study fossil primates, and her research has been featured by the BBC, Popular Mechanics, and The Global Post, among others. Prof. Monson’s debut nonfiction book, BEGINNINGS: HOW THE EVOLUTION OF PREGNANCY MADE US HUMAN, is scheduled for release with Macmillan/Flatiron in 2027. When not in the lab or classroom, Tesla enjoys hiking, reading sci-fi, and playing music with her band. She lives in the Salish Sea region of Washington with her family and cat, Awassa.
Beginnings
Paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology Dr. Tesla Monson, PhD's BEGINNINGS: HOW THE EVOLUTION OF PREGNANCY MADE US HUMAN, introducing the author's research alongside her lived experience as a mother to argue that reproduction and pregnancy are responsible for the evolution of human intelligence.
BEGINNINGS draws on Dr. Tesla Monson, PhD’s research and the research of other contemporary scientists to identify the key changes to pregnancy and reproduction that have defined human evolution. For decades, technology, hunting, and the large brain that made those activities possible, have been depicted as the keys to human evolution. This single-minded focus has emerged both from the materials that are preserved in the archaeological record—lithic tools, butchery marks on bones, evidence of fire—and the fact that almost all of the people digging things up have one defining characteristic in common: they’re men.
BEGINNINGS will tell a different story by introducing us to the science behind three major evolutionary moments that affected pregnancy: A new social structure that included pair-bonding (aka monogamy); faster growth during gestation; and changes in the shape of the pelvis. BEGINNINGS argues that the evolution of pregnancy that resulted from these shifts—endlessly spurred on by increasing resource availability made possible through both biological and cultural evolution—changed everything about the human experience.
Like finding the crucial piece in a forgotten puzzle, we are now suddenly able to see the full picture: The key traits that make us human all find their nexus at pregnancy and motherhood. We can all trace our origins back to the beginnings of the fossil record, through hundreds of thousands of generations of pregnancies that came before us. We all share ancestors. We all share the first mother. We are all linked to the first pregnancy.
In short, the evolution of pregnancy is what made us human.
Publication
US: Macmillan (Flatiron)
Release date: January 2027
