Kermit Pattison

A good account of, as sociologist Bruno Latour might say, how science gets done - at least the palaeontological science of human evolution, which has been dominated for a century by a handful of ambitious and influential scientists, some of whom seem to have had a strong sense of entitlement. Nevertheless, the personality conflicts and heavy reliance of this field on gaining access to, and interpreting, sparse examples of fossils is not typical of most modern sciences, so this book raises provocative questions but also tends to tarnish current practices (and reputations) in the field. Science doesn't have to be like this.… (more)

This was the first book I have completed in audio format. The production was first rate. The format catered to my morning walks and morning drive to work.

The story was engrossing.

It hadn’t occurred to me before how many scientific disciplines are needed to recover, preserve, interpret, and disseminate the lessons of ancient — really ancient — remains of pre-homo sapiens species.

You need anthropologists, biologists, geologists, geneticists, experts in biomechanics to postulate the form of locomotion and physicists to carbon date the mineralized remains of animal bones. You need comparative biologists to analyze animal bones recovered in the same deposits as the bones of the primates recovered. And you need botanists to analyze ancient pollen and grasses to tell you something of the contemporary savanna, whether it was grassy or wooded or both. And you need anatomists to unravel whether the hominids could walk upright, climbed trees, or walked on branches. And for this you needed an understanding of modern primates.

The people who take on this work, in conditions unimaginable, are to be admired for their diligence, skill, and imagination.

These scientists had to tread carefully in the war zones of contemporary Ethiopia. And they trained local peoples to recover and interpret the antiquities themselves.

So much has changed in scholarship since Ardipithecus ramidus was discovered in 1994. I have learned so much in this book.

The hero of this saga, paleo-anthropologist Tim White, laments that fellow scientists rush to conclusions about the origins of homo sapiens long before all the evidence is in and analyzed.

Why is this, I asked myself.

Science seems determined to find the exact point where mankind diverged from animals, when we became different, when we became unique in the animal kingdom.

What if there isn’t such a point of divergence? What if we are more like animals than we like to believe? Or to turn that around: what if animals contain that grain of sentience that we prefer to believe only exists in humans?

If that were the case, we’d have to review our practice of industrialized slaughter of sentient beings like fish, fowl, sheep, pigs, and cattle.… (more)