Roger Lewin (1) (1944–)
Author of Origins
For other authors named Roger Lewin, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Roger Lewin is an associate of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University.
Image credit: harvest associates
Works by Roger Lewin
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1944-10-27
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- science writer
science journalist
biochemist - Organizations
- New Scientist
Science
London School of Economics
Harvest Associates - Short biography
- Roger Lewin has been writing about science for the popular media for almost 30 years, specializing in ecology, evolution, and anthropology. He has written 17 popular science books, including 4 with world-renowned anthropologist Richard Leakey. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [from Java Man (2000)]
- Nationality
- UK
- Places of residence
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Members
Reviews
This book by Richard E. Leakey and co-author Roger Lewin first published in 1978 is built around reflecting on early hominins evidence Leakey, an anthropologist and son of Louis and Mary Leakey, both also renowned in the field, encountered in the over 300 humanoid bones at Koobi Fora, on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya. From the shards of bone and flakes of stone, Leakey considers an Edenic life of reciprocal altruism on page 154 of my edition:
Leakey presents the notion that our ability to care for one and other, our humanity, evolved millions of years ago along the shoreline of Lake Turkana and sites like it in Africa. He compares with our knowledge of hunter-gatherer communities, mostly in Africa and South America. Then, rather suddenly, the musing takes a right turn into identifying unfortunately typical human violence by seeing murder in the bones and considering our tool use is the seeds of our own destruction; an evolutionary dead end through inevitable nuclear war. From the penultimate page:
The ideal breeding ground for the evolutionshow more
of reciprocal altruism is in a group of long-lived, egalitarian, social animals who remain close together throughout their lives. This means that altruistic acts can be repaid over a long period of time. You would not expect this type of behavior to emerge in creatures that rarely encountered each other, through whatever circumstance; there would simply be no opportunity to have a debt to repaid…over countless generations natural selection favored the emergence of emotions that made reciprocal altruism work, emotions such as sympathy, gratitude, guilt, and moral indignation…
Leakey presents the notion that our ability to care for one and other, our humanity, evolved millions of years ago along the shoreline of Lake Turkana and sites like it in Africa. He compares with our knowledge of hunter-gatherer communities, mostly in Africa and South America. Then, rather suddenly, the musing takes a right turn into identifying unfortunately typical human violence by seeing murder in the bones and considering our tool use is the seeds of our own destruction; an evolutionary dead end through inevitable nuclear war. From the penultimate page:
A nuclear holocaust could be the means of extinction of Homo sapiens. Perhaps this is inevitable. Perhaps when Ramapithecus stood upright all those millions of years ago, it was setting off on a journey that ends in yet an other evolutionary blind alley. Many species have faced the same fate. But in our case, extinction would be entirely of our own making, the result of being intelligent enough to create the means of our own destruction but not rational enough to ensure that they are not used.show less
Richard Leakey is the famous anthropologist who, back in 1984, discovered the no less famous 'Turkana Boy'; a nearly complete skeleton of a young Homo erectus having lived about 1.5 millions years ago. Using this fossil as a starting point, Richard Leakey delivers here a fascinating book of popular science, opening up a window upon palaeontology -its successes, its meanderings, its challenges. Himself coming from a prestigious family of palaeontologists (he is the son of Louis and Mary show more Leakey), in love with his job (of which he gives us to see, not without a certain sense of humour, both the highs and the lows) by focusing first on 'Turkana Boy' he goes back in fact to the roots of what make us human.
Homo erectus was indeed a turning point in our evolution, 'the messenger carrying our humanity'. As he puts it: ''to understand the origins of mankind, one has to understand Homo erectus, its anatomy, biology, behaviours.' That's precisely, then, what he purports to do in here, using the remains of 'Turkana Boy' to gather hypotheses from its way of life to its cognitive and intellectual abilities. You bet, the open and contradictory interpretations, the controversies coming with such endeavour (genetics vs anthropology...) are obviously tumultuous! Having said that, once consensus have been reached the questions being raised turn out to be crucial so as to better understand who we are. Homo erectus might have been an hominid for sure; however, he wasn't human. Chapters about consciousness, culture and language are here deeply engrossing. They, above all, open new trails that may never cease to astonish us when it comes to find out what, exactly, distinguish us from these other hominids now extinct, or, nowadays, our cousins the other great apes.
Fascinating and informative, Richard Leakey tames here the quarrels between experts knowing full well that, nevertheless, we ought to stay humble enough to admit to our own past mistakes and the extend of our current ignorance. A very good read! show less
Homo erectus was indeed a turning point in our evolution, 'the messenger carrying our humanity'. As he puts it: ''to understand the origins of mankind, one has to understand Homo erectus, its anatomy, biology, behaviours.' That's precisely, then, what he purports to do in here, using the remains of 'Turkana Boy' to gather hypotheses from its way of life to its cognitive and intellectual abilities. You bet, the open and contradictory interpretations, the controversies coming with such endeavour (genetics vs anthropology...) are obviously tumultuous! Having said that, once consensus have been reached the questions being raised turn out to be crucial so as to better understand who we are. Homo erectus might have been an hominid for sure; however, he wasn't human. Chapters about consciousness, culture and language are here deeply engrossing. They, above all, open new trails that may never cease to astonish us when it comes to find out what, exactly, distinguish us from these other hominids now extinct, or, nowadays, our cousins the other great apes.
Fascinating and informative, Richard Leakey tames here the quarrels between experts knowing full well that, nevertheless, we ought to stay humble enough to admit to our own past mistakes and the extend of our current ignorance. A very good read! show less
Surprisingly entertaining book that discusses the evolution of the world itself, breaking it down by areas and locations, proving that species have a natural tendency to come and go and suggesting that it isn't only the humans who are responsible. That doesn't mean we can simply do what we want though, there is plenty of evidence inside these pages that proves that although nature also destroys habitats and makes drastic changes in order to continue life in all its various forms, so do we. show more And we are much more unbalanced about doing it.
Far from being a lecture on how to change our lives in order to save everything, this book sees the balance needed in keeping knowledge expanding and understanding what must be done to preserve both a species and the natural way of maintaining life around us. After reading this book I found myself highly reminded about the things we as humans do to the world around us, but I saw it in a slightly different light. Very interesting read that has brought on several discussions among friends. show less
Far from being a lecture on how to change our lives in order to save everything, this book sees the balance needed in keeping knowledge expanding and understanding what must be done to preserve both a species and the natural way of maintaining life around us. After reading this book I found myself highly reminded about the things we as humans do to the world around us, but I saw it in a slightly different light. Very interesting read that has brought on several discussions among friends. show less
Not wonderful. Part of it was that there have been a lot of developments since the book was written, but his obsession with refuting the "killer ape" theory rather warped what was presented, as well. It began with an interesting discussion of the finds( and the findings) at his fossil-hunting site at Lake Turkana, and went on to give something of an overview of (then-current) views of the evolution of humans and the fossils on which those views are based. Both of these were frequently show more interrupted by a paragraph or so about how the killer ape theory uses these facts as support but really they mean.... Then he got grander, and started discussing how culture, language, and intelligence developed - which one created the others, how they built on each other, how they made humans unique (and yes, he discussed Koko and the chimps using sign language - there was a chapter about how humans kept looking for distinct markers and finding animals that shared them). But again, the slant was "but despite/because of these things, the view of humans as naturally murderous is way off..." It got quite dull, actually. An interesting theory about the relative power of men and women in society being based on meat, the province of male hunters, being perceived as the high-status food, while plant materials despite being the majority of the diet of hunter-gatherers (or as he says it, gatherer-hunters) are low-status and associated with women. Which only pushes the problem back a step, why is meat high-status? Anyway. It wasn't really worth my time to read this; I didn't learn anything particularly useful (as I'm not very interested in Richard Leakey's opinions), and I was frequently annoyed. Ah well, done and now I can get rid of it. show less
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