Book Description
This book tells the story of human evolution, the epic of Homo sapiens and its colorful precursors and relatives. The story begins in Africa, six to seven million years ago, and encompasses twenty known human species, of which Homo sapiens is the sole survivor. Illustrated with spectacular, three-dimensional scientific reconstructions portrayed in their natural habitat developed by a team of physical anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History and in concert with experts from around the world, the book is both a guide to extinct human species and an astonishing hominid family photo album.
The Last Human presents a comprehensive account of each species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology, lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons for extinction. Also included are summaries of fossil discoveries, controversies, and publications. What emerges from the fossil story is a new understanding of Homo sapiens. No longer credible is the notion that our species is the end product of a single lineage, improved over generations by natural selection. Rather, the fossil record shows, we are a species with widely varied precursors, and our family tree is characterized by many branchings and repeated extinctions.
Exhibition information:
Photographs of most of the reconstructions that appear in this book will be featured in exhibits appearing in the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The opening of the Hall is planned for November 2006.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant and beautiful.......2007-09-06
Brilliant and beautiful, this book may help those who still don't grasp human evolution.
The artwork is spectacular and succeeds at bringing long-extinct hominids back from the dead.
A catalogue of cousins.......2007-08-02
There's a great deal of information available to the interested seeker of human origins. What has been lacking is a good descriptive overview and logical arrangement of the fossils found. Sawyer and Deak have responded to that need with this volume. Arranged in order of the oldest to the youngest of fossil specimens, the authors summarise which parts have been uncovered. In addition, they further descriptions of the likelihood of bipedalism, the known locations with assumed roaming areas, the associated wildlife and climate information. A special feature presents the way the "man-ape" probably appeared in its natural habitat.
The oldest fossils are very fragmentary and lead more to suggestions as to how they fit in the human lineage. Some clearly were successful creatures in their own right, but likely lie in a line that died out in time. Those aged pieces need further finds to establish their place - the chief reason the authors describe the probable range they inhabited. Later, more complete, fossils offer more information. The authors begin depicting fossil pieces in a restored placement with Australopithicus afarensis, the now-famous "Lucy" revealed by Don Johanson and his team in 1973. The authors provide an almost startling image of this hominid searching the savannah for her "lost daughter" - a very human characteristic. Laetoli's preserved footprints are described with the implications for how close to modern humans A. afarensis could stride.
After "Lucy's" time, about 3.5 million years ago, hominids developed into many and varied types. Lucy's fossils were found in Ethiopia, but a million years later a new species, with robust jaws and bearing a crested cranium appeared. Paranthropus aethiopicus had nutcracker jaws and was more sturdily built than Lucy. Yet, in the same time frame, Lucy's likely direct successors also emerged. One of these may have been the first to apply tools to aid food processing. Far away in what is now South Africa, other branches of Lucy's clan may have evolved as a result of earlier forebears migrating. Within another half-million years, examples of hominids in the direct lineage to today's humans appear, only a short distance from the supposed range of Lucy's wanderings. Their descendents launched new migrations traced by finds to the east of their original homelands.
The recent find near Dmanisi in Georgia provides a look at hominid life nearly 2 million years ago. Flaked stone, likely used for meat cutting, although no bones with cut marks have yet been revealed. A contemporary of the Georgian hominid wandered yet further east, typified by the skull and thigh bone excavated by Eugene Dubois in 1891. Homo habilis has been found in other sites, demonstrating its wandering habits. The most astonishing find outside our African origins is the small hominid, H. floresienses, discovered in a cave in Indonesia.
Ultimately, of course, the sole survivor of hominid evolution, Homo sapiens, outlasted its many competitors. The last major contender alongside our species was Home neanderthalis, ranging from today's Middle East into Western Europe. The authors' coverage of this species is thorough, but not extravagant. Moving to our species, Sawyer and Deak provide a good overview of the factors used in classifying the fossils without greatly extending their coverage in comparison to the other topics. To conclude the book, they describe the techniques used in making the representative images of the various hominid species discussed in the text. The key point is how they developed the faces in the images. These stand in stark contrast to some of the historical illustrations of "early man" done earlier.
This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in our ancestral past. Written in a straightforward manner, the authors give the available data, describing various speculations with care. They avoid dwelling on the many controversial questions that have plagued palaeoanthropology, and have no particular positions of their own to forward or defend. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Beautiful Pictorial Guide To Human Evolution For Those Who Aren't Scientists.......2007-07-05
"The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans" is a beautiful, illustrated guide to human evolution that's aimed for a scientifically literate general audience, without much of the terminology associated with paleoanthropology and other relevant aspects of physical anthropology. The principal authors, physical anthropologist Gary P. Sawyer and artist Viktor Deak, are the co-leaders of the Fossil Hominid Reconstruction and Research Team based at the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Anthropology, which has used the techniques of forensic anthropology to recreate these vivid illustrations of these extinct hominid species, often relying on the latest paleoanthropologic research (though, in a couple of instances, the authors observe that some artistic license was taken with the final appearance of several individuals). This book is essentially a visual companion to the dioramas and other related displays featured in the recently opened Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History, in which the reconstructions made by Sawyer and Deak have taken their rigntful prominent places as among the most intriguing in this elegant hall devoted to human evolution. If nothing else, both this book and this new permanent exhibition, demonstrate more convincingly than ever, that human evolution has been an increasingly "tangled web" of species diversity, of which Homo Sapiens - humanity - is the sole surviving species. In addition to Sawyer's and Deak's contributions, there is eloquent writing too from Richard Milner, an anthropologist and writer who is affiliated with both the museum's anthropology department and Natural History Magazine. The book's text does an admirable job covering not only the paleontology of each species (e. g. geological and paleobiogeographic range, palecological reconstruction), but also delves into the probable cultural attributes of each of the twenty-two hominid species. Without question, this book is artistically - and scientifically - the latest word on human evolution aimed for a general audience; I strongly commend Yale University Press for trying to keep its production costs to a minimum to ensure a potentially large audience for it.
The Ultimate Extended Family Photo Album.......2007-07-03
"The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans" is a numinous, scientifically accurate, and artistically inspired depiction of human evolution - the ultimate extended family photo album and history - that follows the emergence of 22 human species from our primordial cradle in Africa six to seven million years ago to the dawn of Homo sapiens.
Unlike overly popularized accounts, "The Last Human" unflinchingly notes that Homo sapiens was not an inevitable outcome. Environment and contingency generated, and the fossil record documents, a hominid family tree sprouting many branches including forerunners, relatives, and extinctions. Photorealistic three-dimensional reconstructions portray hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis, Homo rhodesiensis, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis (among others) with startling and emotionally evocative intensity.
The accompanying text provides a comprehensive account of each species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology, lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons for extinction.
By masterfully merging scientific insight and artistic interpretation into a coherent and compelling whole "The Last Human" eloquently articulates how family history is everyone's heritage. This is a category-defining book that deserves to be widely read. It has my highest recommendation.
Also try Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade, The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors by Ann Gibbons, From Lucy to Language: Revised, Updated, and Expanded by Donald Johansen, or the Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins by Carl Zimmer.
A Hominid Family Photo Album.......2007-06-12
This book is the work of the artists and scientists of the Fossil Hominid Reconstruction and Research Team. Sawyer is the physical anthropologist and Deak is the paleoartist. They take all that is known about each species within the genera Australopithicus, Ardipithicus, and Homo, and synthesize that data into stunning, beautiful, and somewhat disturbing likenesses of individuals. Whether in forecasting the future or in reconstructing the past, the further you get from the present day, the more uncertainty is introduced. The authors admit to a blending of science and art, and they admit that the more flimsy the fossil record, the greater their artistic license. It is said that all of the known fossils of proto-humans would fit in the bed of a pickup truck, and it is with this implicit caveat in mind that you must evaluate the accuracy of the reconstructions. Also, only bone fossilizes, and this is a book about soft tissue, so there is considerable inductive logic implicit in the reconstructions. But, hey, it's a good start, and it's more than we had before Sawyer and Deak had their inspiration. My guess is that any future corrections to their work will likely appear immaterial to the scientifically literate general reader which is their target audience.
All of the paleoanthropological discoveries in the text of this elegant photo album of proto-humans have been published before, and the authors do not claim offer new theories or interpretations of hominid evolution. The reason you will want to read this book is to meet your family in the flesh, to see what your ancestors looked like. Take each reconstruction as a hypothesis; this is what they most likely looked like, based on our current interpretation of the fossil record.
This book's stunning illustrations will be certain to attract a fresh audience of paleoanthropological novices, and they will find, after their initial shock, that the authors present a rather comprehensive introductory course in the topic. It is a welcome addition to a bibliography of recent books aimed at the general reader, including "The Dawn of Human Culture", by Richard Klein, "From Lucy to Language," by Donald Johansen, "Extinct Humans," by Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz, and "Becoming Human," by Ian Tattersal (see my Amazon reviews). This book doesn't require a vocabulary in craniodental morphology, and for the most part scientific terms are avoided. For instance, Sawyer uses the term "man-ape" instead of the term "hominid."
What emerges from these pages is the slow, but accelerating evolution of proto-humans, by a process of brutal natural selection, including many failed "branches" in the evolutionary tree, all but one ultimately leading to extinction, leaving only ourselves.
Book Description
In 1974 in a remote region of Ethiopia, Donald Johanson, then one of America's most promising young paleoanthropologists, discovered "Lucy", the oldest, best preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human ever found. This discovery prompted a complete reevaluation of previous evidence for human origins.
In the years since this dramatic discovery Johanson has continued to scour East Africa's Great rift Valley for the earliest evidence of human origins. In 1975 this team unearthed the "First Family", an unparalleled fossil assemblage of 13 individuals dating back to 3.2 million years ago; and in 1986 at the Rift's most famous location, Olduvai Gorge, this same team discovered a 1.8 million-year-old partial adult skeleton that necessitated a reassessment of the earliest members of our own genus Homo.
Johanson's fieldwork continues unabated and recently more fossil members of Lucy's family have been found, including the 1992 discovery of the oldest, most complete skull of her species, with future research now planned for 1996 in the virtually unexplored regions of the most northern extension of the Rift Valley in Eritrea.
From Lucy to Language is a summing up of this remarkable career and a stunning documentary of human life through time on Earth. It is a combination of the vital experience of field work and the intellectual rigor of primary research. It is the fusion of two great writing talents: Johanson and Blake Edgar, an accomplished science writer, editor of the California Academy of Sciences' Pacific Discovery, and co-author of Johanson's last book, Ancestors.
From Lucy to Language is one of the greatest stories ever told, bracketing the timeline between bipedalism and human language. Part I addresses the central issues facing anyone seeking to decipher the mystery of human origins. In this section the authors provide answers to the basics -- "What are our closest living relatives?" -- tackle the controversial -- "What is race?" -- and contemplate the imponderables -- "Why did consciousness evolve?"
From Lucy to Language is an encounter with the evidence. Early human fossils are hunted, discovered, identified, excavated, collected, preserved, labeled, cleaned, reconstructed, drawn, fondled, photographed, cast, compared, measured, revered, pondered, published, and argued over endlessly. Fossils like Lucy have become a talisman of sorts, promising to reveal the deepest secrets of our existence. In Part II the authors profile over fifty of the most significant early human fossils ever found. Each specimen is displayed in color and at actual size, most of them in multiple views. With them the authors present the cultural accoutrements associated with the fossils: stone tools which evidence increasing sophistication over time, the earliest stone, clay, and ivory art objects, and the culminating achievement of the dawn of human consciousness -- the magnificent rock and cave paintings of Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.
In the end From Lucy to Language is a reminder and a challenge. Like no species before us, we now seem poised to control vast parts of the planet and its life. We possess the power to influence, if not govern, evolution. For that reason, we must not forget our link to the natural world and our debt to natural selection. We need to "think deep", to add a dose of geologic time and evolutionary history to our perspective of who we are, where we came from, and where we are headed. This is the most poignant lesson this book has to offer.
Customer Reviews:
From Lucy to Langauge.......2007-03-19
This is an excellent text for those interested in paleoanthropology and human evolution in general. It is superbly illustrated and the activities of the paleontologist explained in terms that are understandable to the informed layman and provide a fascinating insight into this field.
Beautiful Book on How We Came to Be.......2007-02-08
The title of this book is at the same time both informative and misleading.
It's misleading because it actually goes back millions of years before Lucy walked the earth. And its discussion on language is quite minimal. So if you are looking for a book on language or Lucy, you might want to look elsewhere.
On the other hand, if you're not being quite this picky, this is an excellent overview of the development of humankind. Dr. Johanson was on the team that discovered Lucy, and since this is the second edition of the book which now goes back further than Lucy changing the name might not have made sense.
The book goes back further because new findings in the fossil record now go back to some 7 million years (Lucy is 3.5 millian years old).
The problems with printing any book like this are clearly illustrated by the 'Kennewick Man.' The previous edition of this book was published in 1996. A very short while later, the 'Kennewick Man' was discovered in Washington State that may completely alter the way we think the Americas were populated. This individual died about 9,400 years ago and reconstruction of his appearance from the skull remains has him looking a lot like Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart. Perhaps this lends credulence to European travellers also reaching the Americas as well as Asians coming over the Siberian Land Bridge.
This is a fascinating book, profusely illustrated with excellent photographs of fossils and commentary explaining what these fossils show.
Great.......2007-01-26
I am very pleased with my results. My package came quickly and was exactly what I was expecting.
Excellent overview.......2007-01-16
I just bought the revised edition and also had the earlier edition so the updates were well needed since there's been a lot more discoveries since the first edition. The photographs are the best I have come across in a long time it's like being at the site and looking at them in there actual size. Great book overall and very informative.
Fascinating & Illuminating.......2007-01-12
The explanation of the evolution of humankind in East Africa is a great message and here the photographs of the fossils are fascinating and illuminating.
Book Description
This new edition explains how recent advances in radiometric dating, functional morphology, molecular biology, and archaeological inference have changed our modern interpretations of how hominins lived and dispersed across the globe during the last five million years or more. The updating includes ample discussion of the most recent fossil finds.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent. Another masterpiece. A must have........2005-03-26
I have just finished to read the book in a first reading. This second edition of the book is another masterpiece of the Prof. Conroy. The book is updated and it includes all the aspects of the human evolution, from the plio-pleistocene world to our modern origins. Notable the number of figures, schemes, diagrams and tables present in the book. The book is so updated that it includes the recent dwarf species Homo floresiensis.
Any sort of australopithecus and any sort of homo are included. This is a serious book for the one that really wants to learn the human evolution. I currently think it it is the best. If you purchase it you won't repent of it.
See my previous review of the first edition of this book.
A big thanks to Prof. Conroy.
Average customer rating:
- Human Evolutionary Anatomy
- An excellent book-faithfull to its own title.
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An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy
Leslie Aiello , and
Christopher Dean
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ASIN: 0120455919 |
Book Description
An anthropologist and an anatomist have combined their skills in this book to provide students and research workers with the essentials of anatomy and the means to apply these to investigations into hominid form and function. Using basic principles and relevant bones, conclusions can be reached regarding the probable musculature, stance, brain size, age, weight, and sex of a particular fossil specimen. The sort of deductions which are possible are illustrated by reference back to contemporary apes and humans, and a coherent picture of the history of hominid evolution appears. Written in a clear and concise style and beautifully illustrated,
An Introduction to Human Evolutionary Anatomy is a basic reference for all concerned with human evolution as well as a valuable companion to both laboratory practical sessions and new research using fossil skeletons.
Customer Reviews:
Human Evolutionary Anatomy.......2007-05-07
Very well written and scholarly. Combines the best of human anatomy and biological anthropology. Recommended for anyone who has a serious interest in this field.
Lydia Toso
An excellent book-faithfull to its own title........2000-02-25
Students of Human paleoanthropology should look no further for complete synthesis of anatomical aspects that are proprietary to Hominids-because not only that full treatment is provided on such topics as diachronic trends in qualitative and quantitive development in anatomical features, but recapitulation that contains basic standards of anatomical reporting,complete terminology and also,with full recognition that one important propertes of locomotory system is in its mechanisms for body movement,so that this is not only descriptive work,but one that contains detailed account on anatomical pecularities of Human ancestors,thus providing non-analogues perspective on subject,in full recognition that it is sometimes wrong to accept uncriticaly paralels with modern Humans.Also,some histological aspects are mentioned.This book will provide students with full account on subject of evolutionary anatomy,perhaps one that could became most easily dull,descriptive work under some other concepts,but instead is excelently and logicaly organised textbook.
Book Description
This dynamic chronicle of the race to find the “missing links” between humans and apes transports readers into the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind.
The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.
An award-winning science writer, Ann Gibbons introduces the various maverick fossil hunters and describes their most significant discoveries in Africa. There is Tim White, the irreverent and brilliant Californian whose team discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived more than 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. If White can prove that it was hominid—an ancestor of humans and not of chimpanzees or other great apes—he can lay claim to discovering the oldest known member of the human family. As White painstakingly prepares the bones, the French paleontologist Michel Brunet comes forth with another, even more startling find. Well known for his work in the most remote and hostile locations, Brunet and his team uncover a stunning skull in Chad that could set the date of the beginnings of humankind to almost seven million years ago. Two other groups—one led by the zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by the British geologist Martin Pickford and his partner, Brigitte Senut, a French paleontologist—enter the race with landmark discoveries of other fossils vying for the status of the first human ancestor.
Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human takes readers behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.
Customer Reviews:
Ann Gibbons, the First Human.......2007-09-28
Very informative summary of more recent discoveries and their significance w.r.t. older finds. The competition among field workers is not surprising although at times the story becomes a bit "gossipy"
Inspired Narrative .......2007-07-21
`The First Human' was a surprisingly literary and detailed read about the fossil hunters and their discoveries over the past half-century. While it is primarily historical, the science behind the discoveries is explained quite satisfyingly and succinctly. A great deal of time is spent explaining the politics involved and the professional disputes among the leading figures in the field. But in so doing, the scientific discussions interwoven throughout are all the more memorable.
Gibbons does a good job explaining the limitations of what is known ...and just how scientists can sometimes draw larger conclusions from an isolated fossilized bone. Also interesting is the realization that of all the ancestral hominid remains found in Africa, apart from a few isolated fossilized teeth, there have been no ancestral gorilla or chimpanzee remains found to which they can be compared.
On a lighter note, Gibbons applauds the French for their interest in this subject... and impugns the average American for their ignorance. But after reading 'The First Human' one is left with the impression that science can really do little more than guess about such matters anyway. The hominid fossil evidence is so scarce. Much of the science , in the end, is wishful thinking. And the fact that 45% of Americans think man appeared intact roughly 10,000 years ago...to that I say... their guess is as good as any.
A Human who can write!.......2007-07-03
The First Human by Ann Gibbons is a good book for any armchair paleoanthropologist. She reviews concisely the history of the search for human origins and reveals in great detail the recent discoveries made over the last few decades.
The book is well written and analytical with in depth reporting from actual interviews with the principals who have made the most recent finds.
I highly recommend this book.
Fascinating read!.......2006-12-06
As a student of paleoanthropology, I was slightly wary of reading another popular account of fossil hunting in Africa. After finishing "The First Human," however, I can say with certainty that not only did Ann Gibbons do her homework, but that she was able to deftly weave together both the science and the politics in one of the most fascinating narratives I've read in some time. One really begins to understand both the hardship of paleoanthropological fieldwork and the thrill of discovery. But that of course is only the beginning. Her descriptions of the ensuing scientific cross-fire, often tainted by personal and political conflict, is clear and engaging. All in all, a well-written and up-to-date chronicle of the science of human origins.
Makes You Want to Watch for Anything Else She Writes.......2006-11-05
As best I can tell this is Ann Gibbons first book. And it makes you want to keep an eye out for anything else she publishes.
Nominally this book is a report on the search for our first ancestors. But in reality it is a book on the people doing the searching. Big time science, be it physics or medicine or, as in this case, paleontologists the struggle is only partially one of finding the answer to the problem. The real problems are in getting funded, then when you discover something, going to war against your fellow scientists whole will be attacking your results because if you get more funding, more support, more prizes they will suffer, or at least they think they will.
Ms Gibbons primarily follows four teams who are looking for evidence about our earliest ancestors. Our ancestors didn't conveniently die in nice places that you'd want to visit. Having to go where the fossils are. And in the case of human ancestors, that means Africa. And not the nicest places in Africa but dry hot deserts in Ethiopia, Chad and places like that.
While I suspect that the discoveries described in this book will be replaced by the next finding somewhere else, the interplay of the people will remain constant.
Next, Ms. Gibbons, how about looning into astronomy/cosmology.
Amazon.com
Jared Diamond says, "It would be a slight exaggeration to say that L.L. Cavalli-Sforza studies everything about everybody, because actually he is 'only' interested in what genes, languages, archaeology, and culture can teach us about the history and migrations of everybody for the last several hundred thousand years." Cavalli-Sforza has been the leading architect of a revolution (even a paradigm shift) in human genetics since the 1960s. Because of his work, geneticists no longer think that the human species is divided into color-coded races. Cavalli-Sforza's studies of the transmission of family names in Italy, of the relationship between human genes and languages, of migration and marriage, are the benchmarks of our biological self-understanding.
Genes, Peoples, and Languages is less personal than Cavalli-Sforza's preceding book, The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution. And it is far more compact than the magisterial The History and Geography of Human Genes (available abridged for those who prefer not to buy books by the pound). Instead, it is a an excellent overview of Cavalli-Sforza's many-faceted approach to human history and our present condition. It is that rarest of achievements, holistic without any trace of mushy-mindedness. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Book Description
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza was among the first to ask whether the genes of modern populations contain a historical record of the human species. Cavalli-Sforza and others have answered this question--anticipated by Darwin--with a decisive yes. Genes, Peoples, and Languages comprises five lectures that serve as a summation of the author's work over several decades, the goal of which has been nothing less than tracking the past hundred thousand years of human evolution.
Cavalli-Sforza raises questions that have serious political, social, and scientific import: When and where did we evolve? How have human societies spread across the continents? How have cultural innovations affected the growth and spread of populations? What is the connection between genes and languages? Always provocative and often astonishing, Cavalli-Sforza explains why there is no genetic basis for racial classification.
Customer Reviews:
Genes, People and Languages.......2007-07-31
The connection between the categories in the title becomes more apparent after reading this excellent book.
Genes, Peoples, and Languages.......2007-06-02
Excellent reference explaining the current developments and thinking on the evolution of Homo Sapiens.
Worth a read..........2005-05-25
It seems that Sforza makes the presumption that most readers of this book will have read his earlier works. Perhaps he is justified in deciding thusly. The book, however, comes off as being a overture to the politically-correct in the first half of it and a piece of patchwork for his previous works in the second half. Granted, there have been great advances in the fields of genetics and mollecular archaeology since last he wrote a book marketed toward the layman and patchwork might be necessary.
Sforza, as an elder-statesman in the field of genetics, is entitled to a bit more slack than others. This book, however, does not read as well as his previous works or even as well as the various books by newer authors who have disputed him on such topics as the mannerof the introduction of agriculture to Europe or the nature of race.
Taken as a whole, Genes, Peoples and Languages strikes me as being half sermon and half footnote to a brilliant career. The footnote section is certainly worth reading, but only for those who have read at least one or two of his previous works.
A great introduction to the history of mankind........2005-03-06
This is an excellent and easy to read book about the fascinating analysis of the heritage of mankind. The author has developed an extensive multidisciplinary approach that includes: a) archeology, b) history, c) genetics, d) linguistics, and e) mathematics.
Although the author never stresses mathematics as a key discipline to analyze mankind heritage, his work relied on Principal Component Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, Cluster Analysis, Logistic Regression, and Hypothesis Testing. Thus, the readers familiar with these statistical methods will enjoy reading this book as a fascinating social science application of such methods.
You certainly don't have to be a mathematician or a scientist to enjoy this book. The author has clearly written it as an introduction to this field aimed at the layperson.
You will learn many fascinating concepts. One of those, is that the history of genes, cultures, and languages converge. In essence, they all influence each other back and forth. It is somehow hard to tell what is the main driver of overall changes in population. You run into many Nature or Nurture arguments. Continuing along the same line, he refers to other scientific works explaining the difference in IQ between individuals. Well, it is 1/3 due to heredity (nature); 1/3 due to cultural transmission (nurture); and 1/3 due to differences in personal experience (random). That is a pretty far cry from the 80% to 90% due to heredity that many people believe in. Also, natural evolution will or has already stopped according to the author. This is because medicine in industrialized societies has reduced the natural mortality rate down to almost zero among the pre-reproductive age set. In other words, medicine has eliminated the natural selection process as the survival rate mechanism of our specie. Some of us may have had concepts that humans eventually will evolve and look like aliens with extremely big heads (for superior intelligence and processing powers) and very skimpy bodies (since physical force is useless in an information age). Well, that's not going to happen.
Throughout the book there are many very interesting graphs and maps that beautifully illustrate and clarify the concepts he introduces. The migration map on page 94, clearly outlines all the major original migrations out of Africa starting 100,000 years ago. On page 71, a world map showing the actual genetic distance between locations is fascinating too. On page 164, you can observe the best diagram of the Indo-European languages you will ever see. English is a Germanic language, as we all know. However, English predates German by several centuries!
You can see how throughout his life, he must have been a fantastic university professor. About 6 months ago, I started reselling my books at Amazon Marketplace to cut my cost of reading. However, I am not reselling this one. I am keeping it as a reference. I anticipate there will be so many occasions when I will be glad I have kept it. The book has opened for me a new window of knowledge quest where so many of the social and quantitative sciences have converged into one to crack the mystery of the history of mankind. I hope this book will do for you, what it did for me.
Inspiration for more reading on the subject.......2004-10-12
There is almost no scientific paper on etnology and antropology that doesn't refer to Cavalli-Sforza's work, which spans several decades and accounts for dozens of publications on the most prestigious scientific journals. The capacity of Cavalli-Sforza of translating into popular science the work that he has accumulated in years of world-class research is admirable.
The book features a re-adapted collection of lessons he held in Paris. It is perfectbly suitable for anyone from the layman to the scientist. In order to make the tractation more fluid, notes with more specific details are found in an appendix. The book summarizes the most important steps in the development of Cavalli-Sforza's scientific quest and projects into areas of interest for which he is less famous, namely glottology.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in etnology, antropology, glottology and genetics. It is not too long and can be considered the first inspiration to continue reading on the subject. At times Prof. Cavalli-Sforza's personal comments on the social and political aspects of research on science are expressed, and maybe sometimes they result out of place. Another limit of the book is that, being so short, some topics are just mentioned, and not enough information is given. This may be upsetting, but then again, it is another reason for reading more on the subject.
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in tracking the history of humanity through the differentiation of the genoma, learning about the different families of languages spoken on our planet and searching for accounts of practical achievements of population genetics.
Amazon.com
It's time for a hominid family reunion, and anthropologists Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz have brought the scrapbook. Extinct Humans is both an album of knowledge of our ancestors and closely related species and a theoretical reconsideration of the fossil evidence. Tattersall and Schwartz suggest that many more human species existed than we previously thought, and that many of them existed contemporaneously until about 25,000 years ago. Profusely illustrated, the book makes its case well, showing and discussing the evidence and proposing a family history that pulls all the fossils and theories together into a testable whole. The authors have personally investigated every available hominid specimen, and the depth of their knowledge is staggering at times--but their obsession is enlightening and entertaining.
The introductory history of human taxonomy sets us up for the discussions to follow and reminds us of our tendency to read more into human history than can reasonably be inferred from the evidence. The racist sentiments of 19th-century anthropologists found firm footing in their theories, and we can only wonder what mistakes we're making today. Doing their best to eliminate extraneous details, Tattersall and Schwartz provide a lean, parsimonious theory to guide anthropology into the 21st century, as we try to learn why we're the only ones left. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
An assessment of the many species of humans - all but one of them now extinct - that have existed during the six-million-year-history of the hominid family
Scientists have long envisioned the human"family tree" as a straight-line progression from the apelike australopithecines to the enigmatic Homo habilis to the famous Neanderthals, culminating in us, Homo sapiens. But this model is unlike the evolutionary patterns known for all other vertebrates-patterns that typically reveal multiple branchings and extinctions. In Extinct Humans, Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz present convincing evidence that many distinct species of humans have existed during the history of the hominid family, often simultaneously. Furthermore, these species may have contributed to one another's extinction. Who were these different human species? Which are direct ancestors to us? And, the most profound question of all, why is there only a single human species alive on Earth now?
Customer Reviews:
Morphology reigns supreme.......2006-07-12
The cover blurb mentions that the authors have "personally inspected every available fossil". This is the great strength of the book - the only strength, really. The discussions of morphology are very detailed - excessively detailed, IMHO - while the contributions from other disciplines are mentioned briefly or omitted altogether.
When I bought this book, I was looking for a general overview of modern views on the human evolution, including the recent genetic data, recent climatological data from ice core drilling, paleoecology etc. Paleoclimatology gets about one page's worth (albeit a very interesting one); molecular genetic analysis gets the briefest of mentions in the last chapter, while authors fill page upon page with tedious descriptions of who presented what fossil at which conference and how the authorities of the time reacted to the discovery. In discussion of the age of the Nariokotome fossil (pg 134), instead of telling how the analysis was done, authors merely say "after crunching the data in various ways, Smith concluded...". Sometimes it feels like the authors neither know nor care for anything outside their field of expertise (morphology!).
Some of the authors' obsessions become obstacles to understanding the text. For instance, the authors insist that morphology is more important than fossil dating - OK, point well taken. However, as a visual learner, I would have found it extremely helpful to see a chart or timeline with approximate dates of species' existance - but nooooo, they won't do it. They'd rather spend another ten pages discussing morphology or bashing Mayr-Dobzhansky.
Finally, it felt like the manuscript never saw an editor. There are run-on sentences, subordinate clauses that do not agree etc. etc.
After talking so long about what this book is not, maybe I should say what it is: it's a well-printed, beautifully illustrated atlas of fossils. It's a good addition to your library if you are already an anthropologist. Otherwise, it could be used as a complement to a more thorough text.
Copy Cats.......2006-07-02
When those who love the inquire and quest for the actual orgin of human kind, they dig deep and write what others before them have discovered and think..however, maybe they all are wrong.
How Many would love to READ a Fiction or Fact re. one possible origin maybe all have overlooked????????
Great condition........2005-10-03
This book was in great condition when I received it, but it took just over a week for me to receive it.
It wasn't just us........2004-08-12
Tattersall and co-author Jeffrey Schwartz argue that more of the fossil record should recognize more hominid genera as human. The argument is presented as a survey of extinct humans.
Tattersall has a talent for approaching the complex subject of human evolution and presenting it in a way the intelligent layperson can understand. He doesn't slight those in his and related professions who hold different views, but presents those arguments with his rebuttals.
On the whole, I've read four Tattersall books and they have all been excellent. I recommend him highly to anyone who wants a better understanding of where we came from.
Jerry
Great book on subject plus recent finds.......2004-06-25
This is the most beautifully illustrated of the four books on paleontology I've read recently. The full-color plates really allow you to connect the comparative anatomy discussed in the text with the visible features. Tattersall and Schwartz write well and the text never gets dry or technical. Richard Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture is excellent also and has very clear explanations of high-tech dating methods such as radioisotope dating, thermoluminesence, ESR or electron spin resonance dating, and magnetic-field dating, and he's careful to discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and the technical difficulties and limitations involved in using them.
A major strength of the book is discussing the changes in paleontologists' approach to the taxonomy. An example of a major change is Homo habilis, thought to be the first true tool-using homonid. Consider what happened with one of the so-called "type fossils." Type fossils are the ones that the original definition of the species came from. The problem concerned the type fossils of Homo rudolphensis, known as ER 1470, which were quite famous. H. rudolphensis was an important hominid find with a larger cranial capacity than homo habilis, and was considered a more evolved, later species. It's mostly known from an upper jaw and palate and portion of skull. However, it was discovered that the upper jaw mates almost exactly with OH 64, an Australopithecine lower jaw from Olduvai Gorge (OH means Olduvai Homonid). If this is true, Homo rudolphensis disappears as a species and OH 64 no longer belongs in Australopithecus. As the authors point out, that was especially ironic since ER 1470, although it's still currently assigned to H. rudolphensis, was originally put in H. habilis and was the find which finally convinced scientists that there was something to define the species after all, despite the chaos that had reigned up to that time.
Their difficulties didn't stop there. Because of the enormous influence of evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and the population geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, whose ideas caused paleoanthropologists to think in terms of a single, evolving homonid line from Australopithecus to Homo erectus to Neanderthal to Homo sapiens, paleontologists were for many years reluctant to create new species for their finds, despite the obvious difficulty of fitting so many anatomically distinct fossils into a single species of Homo habilis. As a result, H. habilis became a virtual dumping group for various fossil finds, and only in the last decade were all the different finds reconsidered.
The authors include superb discussions of the fossil and cultural (tool-making) evidence for Homo heidelbergensis and Homo antecessor, considered to be the last common ancestor of the homonid line which led to H. sapiens and Neanderthal. H. heidelbergensis, they point out, also has become a convenient dumping ground for a number of fossils 300,000 to 600,000 years old which have a cranial capacity of around 1200 cc, very close to modern norms. It had robust limbs but more or less modern bodily proportions.
H. antecessor is associated with fossils as old as 789,000 years. It's associated with not so much stone tool-making, which remained relatively primitive, but with evidence at two different sites in Europe of advances for home construction. One site shows a large home constructed of planted saplings drawn together at the top, and the other shows clear evidence of a dwelling with a permanent hearth. Hence, H. antecessor is thought to have domesticated fire.
Finally, there's an introductory chapter discussing the early history of comparative fossil anatomy, including the important work of Blumenbach, who founded the science and improved on many of Linnaeus's ideas, especially the definition of the genus Homo, and our own species, Homo sapiens.
Average customer rating:
- More excellence from Sawyer
- high praise, indeed
- Enter the World of a parallel universe
- Excellent Parallel Universe Story
- For fans of Neanderthals.
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Hominids (Neanderthal Parallax)
Robert J. Sawyer
Manufacturer: Tor Science Fiction
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Binding: Paperback
Sawyer, Robert J.
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Humans (Neanderthal Parallax)
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ASIN: 0765345005 |
Book Description
Hominids examines two unique species of people. We are one of those species; the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they became the dominant intelligence. The Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but with radically different history, society and philosophy. Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe. Almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist, he is quarantined and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended-by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence, and especially by Canadian geneticist Mary Vaughan, a woman with whom he develops a special rapport. Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around and an explosive murder trial. How can he possibly prove his innocence when he has no idea what actually happened to Ponter?
Customer Reviews:
More excellence from Sawyer.......2007-09-22
I've read several of Sawyer's books, and this book is as enjoyable as the others, if not more so. Sawyer's got a clean smart style thats easy to read, and he keeps the pages turning.
This books strengths (great characters, social commentary, solid world building) far outweigh any weaknesses.
This is SciFi thats should appeal both to SciFi fans, as well as mainstream fiction readers; or readers of Joe Haldeman and Robert Charles Wilson.
high praise, indeed.......2007-08-05
I'm not usually much for science fiction, but I loved Hominids. The concept of an alternative universe in which it is the Neanderthals who surived rather than Homo sapiens sapiens is incredibly clever. And Sawyer's assumption that, had they survived, Neanderthals would have, like us, evolved science, culture, and civilization makes perfect sense.
Sawyer spins a modern tale of Gulliver among the Lilliputians, a naif who is both inspired and appalled by the good and bad in human civilization. I won't spoil the novel by giving too much away -- suffice it to say that the reader comes away re-evaluating much of society.
When someone who doesn't usually read SF likes a book this much, it's high praise, indeed.
Enter the World of a parallel universe.......2007-07-15
Hominids
In Hominids Robert J. Sawyer introduces you to Ponter Boddit and Mare. Ponter is from a parallel universe to Earth where Neanderthal Man won supremacy over Homo Sapiens or Glikskins as Ponter calls them. In this fascinating world Sawyer introduces you to life among the Neanderthals. One wonders if Sawyer is actually advocating this life. A life that includes homosexuality as the norm, absolutely no privacy. and many other Liberal ideals. Sawyer is, after all, a Canadian. In Hominid you spend most of your time in the Neanderthal world. This is the first in the Neanderthal Parallax trilogy. It is followed by Humans (Volume Two of The Neanderthal Parallax), then Hybrids (Neanderthal Parallax).
Gunner July,2007
Excellent Parallel Universe Story.......2007-06-16
I recently discovered Mr. Sawyer's work. Undoubtedly, he is a great hard Sci-Fi writer, I think one of the best among the newcomers. Hominids is not up the quality of "Calculating God", but still a good novel, and his setting of the Neanderthal World is really excellent. The rape story I considered unnecessary and really a distraction on the main plot, but I guess Mr. Sawyer wanted to put an emphasis on the social differences between the two parallel Earths. Also the trial for the supposed murder is hardly credible, as it is driven by feelings and circunstancial evidence only. Overall, once again Mr. Sawyer did his research and came up with a very interesting story based on hard scientific facts and plenty of his imagination.
A good read for hard Sci-Fi fans, and I still wondering if it is worthy to read the whole trillogy.
For fans of Neanderthals. .......2007-03-14
Hominids is about two Earths, one which is ours and one which is a parallel world full of Neanderthals. Or maybe we're the parallel Earth? Anyway, Ponter Boddit ends up trapping himself in our universe as a result of a failed experiment with a quantum computer. On the other hand, he invented a perfect way to travel between universes.
But while he is on our side of the barrier, being hounded by reporters, picking up germs his immune system can't handle and having a great time his male-partner is being put on trial for murder.
That's right. Without a body, or even any solid idea of what happened, Adikor Huld is being put on trial for Boddit's death. All he has is a messy computer lab, a history of violence and a missing partner.
A great sci-fi book and a book for anybody who enjoys Neanderthal related books.
Book Description
This book provides a complete, unbiased, relatively non-technical overview and state-of-the-art discussion of the rapidly changing field of paleoanthropology. It features an abundance of illustrations and photographs from the authors' visits to fossil sites, and views skeletal remains in light of what they can reveal about the populations they represent -- not only their anatomy but also their behavior and social organization. Features rather extensive discussions on the use of genetic data -- particularly that of mtDNA. Covers: Fossils, Fossilization, and Dating Methods; Determining Evolutionary Relationships; Our Place in the Animal Kingdom; Reconstructing Human Behavioral Patterns and Social Organizations: Use of the Comparative Approach; Early Primate Evolution; The Transition to Apes; Trends in Human Evolution; The Earliest Hominids; The Hominid Divergence; Homo Erectus; Early Homo Sapiens; Neandertals and Their Immediate Predecessors; and The Appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens. For anyone interested in a state-of-the-art discussion of paleoanthropology.
Customer Reviews:
Complete, comprehensive and compelling.......2002-02-02
Poirier and McKee present a wealth of information on the history of human evolution. They outline the methods of dating, identifying and assembling hominid fossils. Dating is shown to be, within the ranges of accuracy, nearly an absolute with today's technology. With the age of the fossil[s] established and the parts identified, the fossil may then be placed in its proper location on the human family tree. Poirier and McKee spend the remainder of the book describing the concepts, controversies and resolutions associated with that final step. The material requires attentive perusal, but the interested reader will be richly rewarded.
Early hominid fossils were chronologically located by stratigraphy - the position of the fossil in the rocks in relation to other, known, remnants. The early finds were often located in poorly identified areas, or mistakenly dated for a variety of reasons. Paleoanthropologists of an earlier day lacked the technology available today. Worse, they were often unaware of the need to examine the likely environment of the time the fossil was laid down. As the authors point out, this misunderstanding led to misinterpretation of how evolutionary relationships were structured. Today's "digs" are the subject of multi-discipline effort, with botanists, geologists and other fields represented. The more comprehensive picture laid out by these environment associated with the find allow a firmer footing on our ancestral lineage.
While that assertion sounds promising and our heritage is now viewed with confidence, nothing could be further from the truth. Where the human evolutionary tree once looked rather simple, with but a few offshoots extending from the central trunk, the improved accuracy of dating shows many branches. How many of these truly belong on the main branch and how many led to the dead end of extinction is what gives this book its real value.
Paleoanthropology has been among the liveliest of sciences. The debates and controversies have left academic halls and achieved public exposure. Poirier and McKee present the contentions of most of the major figures in the field with circumspection and clarity. With each new find, various interpretations arose, researchers attacking and defending positions from various foundations. The authors give each assertion its due, with resolution occasionally based on their own assessment. They have no hesitation in stating their own position, but it's given with justifications. Counter arguments are made with confirming data. Evidence is shown, but not nearly as strongly as the need for new results. This book, in many respects, reads like an academic work, but that in no small part is due to the authors'
call for more work in the field.
It would be unfair to say that every hominid fossil is given the authors' personal scrutiny, but the impression is proximate. Nearly every major site, with many of the associated prime fossils are described, sometimes with maps and photographs. The illustrative material, maps, diagrams and photographs are invaluable. About the only missing element is a single skeleton and skull with the bones frequently discussed in the book labeled. While many are, they must be examined out of context in many cases. If you have the anatomy, you won't need the information, but the rest of us require the crutch.
For anyone wishing to keep abreast of the research in determining where humanity comes from, this book is a treasure. Given the amount of information the authors had to cope with, the work is clear, unequivocal and immensely valuable. While not a light read, there's little to obstruct even the novice reader. The material is well organized and presented with a clear, straightforward style. Since the authors' aim is to explain [and recruit!] without perplexing the reader or seeking adherence to positions, they have produced a book that will endure.
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