Wayfinding : the science and mystery of how humans navigate the world /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human.

"A marvel of storytelling." -- Kirkus (Starred Review)

In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. 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. 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.

O'Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. 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.
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 talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. 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

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue: Wayfinding (p. 1)
• Part 1 Arctic
• The Last Roadless Place (p. 23)
• Memoryscapes (p. 37)
• Why Children Are Amnesiacs (p. 56)
• Birds, Bees, Wolves, and Whales (p. 76)
• Navigation Made Us Human (p. 98)
• The Storytelling Computer (p. 118)
• Part 2 Australia
• Supernomads (p. 135)
• Dreamtime Cartography (p. 146)
• Space and Time in the Brain (p. 161)
• Among the Lightning People (p. 183)
• You Say Left, I Say North (p. 199)
• Part 3 Oceania
• Empiricism at Harvard (p. 217)
• Astronauts of Oceania (p. 235)
• Navigating Climate Change (p. 248)
• This Is Your Brain on GPS (p. 261)
• Lost Tesla (p. 277)
• Epilogue: Our Genius Is Topophilia (p. 290)
• Acknowledgments (p. 307)
• Notes (p. 311)
• Selected Bibliography (p. 324)
• Index (p. 345)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Investigative reporter O'Connor (Resurrection Science) goes back in time and around the globe to explore how humans have learned to navigate. From neuroscientists, she learns that the ability to navigate is controlled by the hippocampus. Because it helps with memory formation, deterioration of the hippocampus is also implicated in Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. This led the author to speculate on the impact of GPS systems on the human brain. She learned that the brain of a child, which doesn't begin to hold episodic memories until about the age of six, is actively shaped by environmental stimulation, and that children who are more active have larger hippocampal volume and better memories. To study early forms of navigation, she visited places that still practice the old ways, including the Canadian Arctic, Aboriginal communities in Australia, and islands in the South Pacific. Her rich exploration concludes with a call for readers to explore nature and observe their surroundings, and to leave the electronic device at home. VERDICT For readers curious about nature, science, the human brain, and how we navigate our world.-Caren Nichter, Univ. of -Tennessee at Martin © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

In the skilled hands of journalist O'Connor (Resurrection Science), the topic of wayfinding, or "the use and organization of sensory information from the environment to guide us," proves rich and multifaceted. Drawing on new discoveries in neuroscience, psycholinguistics, anthropology, geography, and oceanography, she discusses how, unassisted by modern technology, native master navigators can learn to read featureless Arctic ice floes, shifting sands in the Australian outback, or the currents of the South Pacific to such an extent that they rarely get lost, even in places they've never been before. O'Connor discusses how this knowledge is passed from generation to generation, and addresses the related question of whether "rational scientific thinking didn't originate with the Greeks but with hunter-gatherers" and their ability to track animals, which may have contributed to the dramatic growth in hominin brain size several hundred thousand years ago. O'Connor also looks to the future, investigating how the growing use of GPS technology is affecting brain development. Whether describing laboratory studies with mice running mazes or how Marshall Islanders navigate by feeling wave patterns in their stomachs, O'Connor brings her subjects to life in a delightful manner. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Science writer O'Connor (Resurrection Science, 2015) travels to the Arctic, Australia, and the South Pacific to learn how populations living in isolated environments developed highly tuned skills for navigating. Narratives passed down through generations informed travelers of landmarks and traditional placenaming filled in the gaps. Not coincidentally, she learns that the hippocampus is responsible for storing spatial and storytelling information. Childhood explorations help build this area of the brain, which explains the lack of consistent memories from our first years. Now that we rely on maps and GPS, most people never learn traditional tactics of wayfinding, or navigating with the help of environmental and celestial cues, methods that have served humankind since at least since the time of the Neanderthals. O'Connor illustrates efforts by indigenous peoples to reclaim these time-tested techniques and share them with new generations. A key chapter on climate change looks at how traditional navigators have identified noticeable shifts in the environment. The implications of human navigation and early migration have fascinated scientists for centuries; O'Connor has condensed current scientific understanding into an accessible and engaging title for all.--Dan Kaplan Copyright 2020 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Some people get lost with a map while others need only glance at the sky to know where they are. As this engaging work on the art and science of navigating capably shows, the better adept at geography wins.Travel broadens the mindliterally. Writes journalist O'Connor (Resurrection Science: Conservation, De-Extinction and the Precarious Future of Wild Things, 2015) in this lively and consistently entertaining book, the hippocampus, which processes memory, enlarges with our geographical knowledge, such that "the environmental stimulus itself, the practice of navigation over timeshowed plasticity, an ability to adapt and change, in structure of the brain." Over the course of their many interesting adaptations to living in the world, humans have learned to travel great distances not just by making maps and charts or by reading compasses, but also by studying the sky and the Earth itself and, intriguingly, building bodies of song, story, and myth around theme.g., the famed songlines of Australia, which the author considers at length. Fittingly, O'Connor courses from continent to continent, mining anthropology, geography, neurology, psychology, and biology, and she also looks at odd ethical problems: For instance, traditional Polynesian navigational methods run the risk of disappearing in light of GPS and other technologies, but those very technologies might also be used, properly applied, "to ensure that future minds continue to undergo ruprup jokur and fill with knowledge of the sea." Whether traditional or technologically enhanced, geographical knowledge is strongly linked with memory; an intriguing hypothesis links mental decline due to aging to the decline in navigating from place to place as one's world shrinks. Throughout her own travels, O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn.There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent bookdevouring it makes for a good start. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

M.R. O'CONNOR's reporting has appeared in Foreign Policy, Slate, The Atlantic, Nautilus and The New Yorker. Her work has received support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2016 she was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She is the author of Resurrection Science. A graduate of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, she lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn.