BONES OF CONTENTION: Controversies in the Search for Human Origins

by Roger Lewin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1987

Not just another ""stones and bones"" account of human evolution. It is Lewin's thesis, amply demonstrated, that paleoanthropology is the most subjective of sciences, because it engages the emotions of virtually everyone; and since the evidence is scrappy, interpretation is everything. Lewin's notion goes far toward explaining the howls of derision that greeted poor Raymond Dart's landmark Taung baby fossil: it was too obviously apelike and small-brained to have been a hominid. Instead, scientists embraced the fraudulent Piltdown discovery (the skull of a modern human combined with the jawbone of an ape) because they knew that human ancestors had to have had large brains. Elsewhere, Lewin spares virtually nobody, from Richard Leakey (with whom Lewin wrote Origins, etc.) to Donald Johanson, discoverer of Lucy. Leakey, Lewin notes, though a superb fund-raiser and expositor, is hampered by his lack of formal scientific training, and runs his digs in an autocratic manner that Americans in particular find offensive. Johanson, in turn, outraged many scientists with his Australopithecus afarensis designation: he used as his type specimen a scrap of jawbone found by Mary Leakey at Laetoli, when he had Lucy, a 40% complete skeleton from Afar; the two fossils, Lewin also notes, are in addition separated by 1500 miles distance and half a million years in time. To put matters in perspective, many paleoanthropologists now ruefully admit their own errors and biases. And the excitement generated by each new fossil discovery continues unabated, even though, sadly, the rich Ethiopian beds are still closed to exploration. A splendid, stirring, and eye-opening account, to be devoured by the knowledgeable, or read in combination with Origins, Lucy, John Reader's Missing Links, etc.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1987

ISBN: 0226476510

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION