Extinct Humans

Rating:
Summary: It wasn't just us.
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing account of human evolution
Review: "Extinct Humans" is a fascinating account of human evolution, extraordinarily illustrated with crisp, powerful photographs of fossils which drive home the point that these are the remains of actual beings who have inhabited this world before us, whether they were our direct ancestors or instead "cousins" to our own line of descent.

Tattersall and Schwartz have studied not just the literature on the subject, but virtually all the fossils themselves, giving them a perhaps unmatched command of the variations in the homanid fossil record. They argue persuasively in a clear, well-organized text that modern Homo sapiens is the sole survivor of the many distinct homanid species which have existed over the past two million years, that most of the fossils which have been found represent not ancestors of our own specific line, but relatives which split off in different directions before ultimately coming to a literal dead end. Their discussion of the interaction between Neaderthals and modern humans in Europe (and possibly between Homo erectus and modern humans in southeast Asia) is especially absorbing, delving into questions of technological change, the emergence of symbolic thought, and the creation of language.

The study of human evolution has, well, evolved enormously in the 35 years I have been interested in the topic. "Extinct Humans" is, to my way of thinking, today's best summary and analysis of current knowledge.

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book...Whether you Believe It or Not!!
Review: Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz have put together what is perhaps the most beautiful book on Paleoanthropology and the study of Fossil Humans ever published. Whether you agree with Tattersall's theories or not, this is really a "MUST READ" for any student of Archaeology (in general) and Fossil Hominids and "Extinct Humans".

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: It's been 20 years since I read up much on the paleoanthropology, so I thought I'd get up to date and read some of the recent books on the subject. One thing I noticed right away, compared to when I was last studying the subject in college, was how our evolutionary tree was now much "bushier," compared to what we knew back then. Now it's thought that there were at least 3 or 4 different species of Australopithecines, and the same goes for Homo habilis, and H. erectus.

Besides this book, so far I've read Paul Jordan's Neanderthal, Richard Leakey's The Origins of Humankind, and Richard Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture. They're all excellent books, but Klein's and Tattersall's were both published in the last year, so they're the most recent, and include important information on the most recent finds, such as Ardipithecus ramidus, although the Sahelanthropus tchadensis discovery by the M. Brunet expedition was so recent it unfortunately doesn't appear in either book.

This book is the most beauifully illustrated of the four books I've read so far. The full-color plates of the different skulls really allow you to connect the comparative anatomy as discussed in the text with the actual features. The book has very nice, glossy paper, so the photos look great, but that also means its the most expensive book of the four. Tattersall's writing is excellent and never gets dry or technical, and the Klein book is also extremely well written. Klein's book also has very clear explanations of high-tech dating methods such as radioisotope dating, thermoluminscence, ESR or electron spin resonance dating, and so on, and he also discusses their strengths and weaknesses, and the technical problems and limitations involved in using them, which I liked.

The book also has an excellent introductory chapter in which the author discusses the early history of comparative fossil anatomy, including the important work of Blumenbach, who founded the science and revised and expanded on many of Linnaeus's notions about taxonomy, especially the definition of the genus Homo, and our species, Homo sapiens.

The Leakey book is now almost 10 years old, and although somewhat dated, it's still worth reading, as its focus is different from these two books. It's not primarily about the comparative anatomy of the different fossil finds so much as what the changes in anatomy from the pre-homonids to the homonids meant for our physiology and ultimately our life-style. Leakey uses the fossil record to show that such human characteristics as a prolonged, helpless infancy, a more active and athletic way of life, delayed sexual maturity, the development of finer tool-making, and the advent of complex social relationships and sophisticated language, all arose during the transition from the Australopithecines to the more advanced Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

Neanderthal, by Paul Jordan, is the most technical and in some ways the most difficult to read, but it's the most detailed and in-depth discussion I've seen on this important homonid and its relatives. Jordan does have some chapters on the other pre-homonid and homonid evlutionary lines, but you don't get to these until you're halfway into the book, so the main emphasis is definitely on Neanderthal and the major discoveries there. Therefore, I would recommend you read either Klein's or Tattersall's book before this one to get a better idea of all the earlier and later species before tackling this book, since it's so heavily Neanderthal-weighted.

Overall, however, all of these are excellent books, and each has its own pros and cons. My preference, and the ones I enjoyed the most, were the present volume and Klein's, partly because their recent publication allows them to discuss the most recent finds, but also I found them to be the most readable and well-written.

Hope my little comparison review of recent paleoanthropology books helps, and happy book buying and reading!

Rating:
Summary: Splitting heirs
Review: Paleoanthropologists are a little sensitive about their field of study and how it is overshadowed by genetics and evolutionary biology. As such we can forgive Ian Tatersall for the parts of the book where advocacy for his position becomes a bit strident.

The basic argument of EXTINCT HUMANS is that throughout the evolutionary history of hominids there have been at least 15 species of humans, some of which coexisted. All but Homo sapiens are extinct. Naturally there is no argument about the extinction of other hominids, but other aspects of this position are not universally accepted. There are many other scientists that argue for a linear descent of man from Ardipithecus ramidus through Australiopithicus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus to us. These opposing camps are called "splitters" and "lumpers". Splitters see a great number of less variable species wheras lumpers see few species with greater variation. Ian Tattersall is one of the better known spokepersons for the splitters. As Jerry Seinfeld would say 'not that there's anything wrong with that', and we should applaud the use of these names by scientists as a good sign of their not taking themselves too seriously. That's on the surface though because beneath the cute names are some very strongly argued positions.

What seems to bother Mr Tattersall and what comes through in his book is that the linear descent lumper theory owes a lot to two scientists who were not even paleontologists. He frequently refers to Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky as the source of this misguided theory and in explaining why the splitters have historically been rejected he says: "how could anyone, much less a bunch of paleoanthropologists who were not equipped with the supposedly more biologically informed backgrounds of Mayr and Dobzhansky, disagree with them?" He says that "No one could. Or, at least, no one would who didn't want to be accused of being anti-evolutionary."

There is too much of this washing of paleontological dirty laundry here and it is in fact rather unnecessary as recent fossil finds are much more supportive of Tattersall's views. The recent discovery of Kenyanthropus platyops by Meave Leakey - the 3rd generation of that family of Kenyan hominid hunters has shown that there are in fact not only previously unknown human species but this one might also be a new genus.

Where this book excells is in it's portraying and explaining the fossil record of humans. There are numerous figures, charts, maps and photos. The chapters are thorough with their explanations of the different stages of our evolutionary history. Chapter 6 subtitled the "Great Diaspora" looks at theories of how and when Europe was colonized. Such discussions naturally look at the "African Eve" theory of hominid origins and this book spends sufficient time on it. In summary you could say Mr Tattersall takes an extreme taxonomic view of human evolution; somewhat like a compulsive compiler of lists or an obsession with putting each thing in it's proper place. This is best illustrated with his species classification of Homo fossils as follows: erectus (Asians), antecessor (Europeans) and ergaster (Africans).

Critics point out that humans are more variable morphologically than any other primate species but this variation is within group. Geneticists argue also that genetic variation is much less than morphological variation. Together this seems to say, Kenyanthropus platyops notwithstanding, lumpers with their arguments in favor of fewer and more variable species still have a point.

The irony with science writing is that for every interpretation offered and truth discovered there is always another opinion. It certainly applies here and it means we cant be satisfied with the single view that EXTINCT HUMANS offers. It makes for some further interesting reading.

Rating:
Summary: Hairsplitting to the point of fantasy.
Review: Thanks to the work of molecular biologist Morris Goodman and company, we are fairly certain that chimpanzees and even gorillas should be reclassified into the genus Homo. Tattersall, Schwartz & Company need to look up from the bones and rulers once in a while. The sections on speciation and Neandertal "peculiarities" are amusing, however.

Rating:
Summary: Our Very Nature -
Review: The whole of paleoanthroplogy is mesmerizing to me. Without being a paleoanthropologist myself, I cannot offer a studied opinion of this work. I simply stand in awe at the scene which, Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey Schwartz have painted. Since this book is not a novel, I have no fear of revealing its ending... we, are the only surviving hominids! What drama of intolerance created this fate is elucidated by this mind blowing tome.

b|b

Rating:
Summary: Family of Man
Review: This is a controversial but interesting, and usefully up to date, account of the fossil record of human origins. The format and illustrations are excellent, and the book proceeds on the issues with dispatch. One need not agree entirely to find the book espousing a clear point of view otherwise in diminuendo. The review of Dawkins, and the authors' reply can be found at the book's website, extincthumans.com. The authors viewpoint challenges the view of linear descent by pointing to the branching of the genus Homo into many species. The implication is of processes of extinction in the relations of these species. The book also brings in Schwarz's theory as expounded in his Sudden Origins. The result seems to challenge the Synthesis itself as seen in the views of such as Dobzhansky.
The viewpoint expressed is important enough to deserve direct recommendation, while at the same time one feels complelled to register a personal reaction that finds such books as category unable to produce a real theory of evolution, with this inability highlighted all the more in such a clear account. For one thing, the record suggests that while competition between the branches of man results in extinction of some of those branches this is a process that occurs after the basic evolutionary differentiation, as with modern man and the Neanderthal. In general one simply has to ask, where did we get man from at all. At the end there are some speculative suggestions about the source of an unknown major innovation, perhaps connected with language. Yet how is this possible in the time frame indicated? In any case it should be clear we do not have a theory of man's descent, the more so as Darwin's view is bypassed here. One of the last pictures in the book is of wooden flutes from ca. 30 kyr, and we must wonder indeed at the sudden great flowering of homo sapiens at the beginning of the last stage of his emergence. One has to wonder if the major core of the theory is not entirely lacking, for these cultural indications of art at the highest level are seen in history to be associated with something quite different from selectionist evolution. Finally, even if linear descent fails, it does not follow there is no directionality to evolution. These branching processes do not exclude some unknown process of discontinuous evolution leading beyond this differentiation. There is no proof of such a thing, but the evidence clearly suggests it, indeed cries out for it, and also suggests why the assumptions of current evolutionary theorists are forever struggling in contradictions.
Worth wrestling with this book, and reading Schwarz' Sudden Origins alongside.

Rating:
Summary: Great book on subject plus recent finds
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great book on subject plus recent finds
Review: 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.