About the Book:
Before
the wolves barged in the door, demanding that their story be told,
Dorothy Hearst was a senior editor at Jossey-Bass, where she published
books for nonprofit, public, and social change leaders. She currently
lives, writes, and plays with dogs in Berkeley, California. Spirit of the Wolves,
the third and final title in the Wolf Chronicles, will be released
December 2. For more information, and to download free CCSS-aligned
discussion questions for all three novels, visit her website: dorothyhearst.com.
The Cool Scientific Theory Behind The Wolf Chronicles by Dorothy Hearst
The Cool Scientific Theory Behind The Wolf Chronicles by Dorothy Hearst
The
Wolf Chronicles trilogy tells the tale of how the
wolf became the dog from the wolf’s point of view, and follows Kaala, a young
wolf living 14,000 years ago who discovers that she’s destined to bring wolves
and humans together.
It’s the story
of Kaala’s adventures and coming of age, but it’s also the story of our own evolution
and, in particular, a really cool and controversial scientific theory about it:
wolf-human coevolution.
Coevolution is
the process by which two or more species mutually affect one another’s
evolution. Wolf-human coevolution is the idea that wolves—and later dogs—played
an important role in our evolution and vice versa. (Every dog living today is
the descendant of wolves.) It may even be that wolves were part of the reason
we became such a dominant species.
Some people
believe that this is as simple as wolves giving us more time to begin farming
by hunting with us and by guarding our homes. Some believe it goes much
further—that wolves taught us (by example) to hunt cooperatively, have
centralized meeting places, and form complex societies. DNA evidence shows that
wolves have been around us for at least 40,000 years and maybe as long as
150,000 years, which means that they may have been hanging out with us for much
of the time we’ve been human.
Wolves are also
a lot like us. They live in extended families. They take care of wolves that
are too old to hunt, and the whole pack raises the pups. They
love each other and fight with each other in ways that look very familiar to
any family or group of friends. It makes sense that their dog descendants fit
so well into our lives.
Reading about all
of this fascinated me, and it’s what convinced me to write about the wolves. I
wondered: what if wolves domesticated us as much as we domesticated them? What
would happen if at every turning point in our evolution, the wolves were there?
What if they were why we developed language? What if they were why we survived
instead of the Neanderthals? All of these ideas intrigued me.
From there, I left what was known behind and moved into making stuff up. I thought it would be interesting if the wolves were aware of the fact that they were changing us, and were doing so on purpose. Then they needed to have legends to explain this, so I made up those legends. Kaala’s story became part of a larger one. She wanted acceptance into her pack and to keep the humans and wolves from fighting with each other, but her story was also about how we evolved to be what we are now—and how we may or may not evolve enough to survive the future.
1 comment:
Thank you so much for hosting me here on YA Book Nerd! I'm happy to answer any questions.
Dorothy
Post a Comment