Back in 1998 I gave full rein to my fascination in evolution, early man and paleoanthropology when I bought Ancestral Passions (Simon & Schuster, 1995). It was the first full biography of Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey. I was hooked from page one.
I have kept this book ever since in the hope that one day I would have the time to reread it. But I know I won’t. As much as I’d like to other books, and newer passions have led me down different pathways. Looking inside I am reminded how densely typed the text is and how few illustrations there were – at over 600 pages, this is a once in a lifetime reading experience! One I’m very glad it did.
It set the bar for scholarly, well-researched, engaging biographies. I loved the Leakey family, warts and all, as well as the science, historical and travelogue elements. If you are ever in the market for a book about the Leakey family, then this is the one.
The Wisdom of Bones (1997) quickly followed.
Naturally there was some overlap with the Leakey family story, but The Wisdom of Bones was more about the science.
This is the story of “Nariokotome boy” unearthed in 1984 by a team of paleoanthropologists (including the husband and wife authors of this book) on a dig in northern Kenya. “He was a nearly complete skeleton of Homo erectus, a creature that lived 1.5 million years ago and is widely thought to be the missing link between apes and humans.”
I underlined oodles of sections and made many marginalia, but I will leave you with their final thoughts on evolution as they match my own,
The more common perspective is to cast the course of hominoid evolution as a trajectory towards humanness, as if evolution had a preordained goal. If that were true, then the boy ought to be a perfect missing link, half ape, half human. Instead, he is neither one nor the other but a novel combination of characteristics. To me, it is clear that evolution is a more random process. The various hominoid species we know so far are experiments with different combinations of traits from both apes and humans; some of the outcomes have been seemingly haphazard and short-lived, others successful and enduring. But these extinct species were not failed attempts to becoming human. They were creatures adapted to niches and life-styles that go beyond those of the few species who still survive.
I’m sure I will read more evolutionary, paleoanthropology books in the years to come, but they will be ones that have the latest scientific updates and research.
Can you recommend any?
(This) Authentic Life 