Who told the first joke?
Who brewed the first beer?
Who caught the first case of smallpox? And, most critically, who was the first person to brave the slimy, pale oyster?

In Who Ate the First Oyster?, writer Cody Cassidy uses the latest tools and discoveries of modern science to peer into our past and reveal the identity of the prehistoric geniuses (and the lucky fools) behind history's greatest innovations.

With a sharp sense of humour and boundless enthusiasm for the wonders of our ancient ancestors, Who Ate the First Oyster? profiles the perpetrators of the greatest firsts and catastrophes of prehistory. Until recently these heroes and villains have been completely anonymous, but thanks to modern DNA research and new archaeology, individual people from our deep past are coming into view. Here, in this groundbreaking book, they emerge and take shape as real human beings who are, in many ways, some of the most important who have ever lived.


'Cassidy tells the stories of individuals over the past thousands and even millions of years whose names will never be known, but whose innovations benefit us to this day.' New York Post


'In this fascinating and entertaining book, Cody Cassidy has done what might seem impossible: illustrating the identity, life, and death of some of the most momentous-and entirely anonymous-figures in human (and prehuman) history' Ryan North