Donald C. Johanson

This is the best refutation of the creationist nonsense I have run across.Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson are also co-authors of [b:Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind|189311|Lucy The Beginnings of Humankind|Donald Johanson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172549027s/189311.jpg|183010]. Edey and Johanson have painstakingly, but most engagingly, delineated the evidence for evolutionary theory from Darwin through the molecular evidence of Vincent Sarich. Along the way we learn of Mendel's show more peas, Crick's DNA studies, and of T.H. Morgan, the discoverer of genes and their link to heredity. Morgan unwittingly provided the mechanism for Darwin's natural selection speculations. He was a natural skeptic who refused to believe Mendel's hypotheses. He painstakingly anesthetized hundreds of thousands of fruit flies and viewed them through a microscope to track changes in eye color which revealed mutant variations.

The chapters on Darwin are fascinating. Darwin made important inferences from five major observations: (1) species have great potential fertility; 12) populations tend to be stable; (3) food resources are limited and remain constant; (4) no two individuals are identical; and, (5) variation is heritable, i.e. offspring tend to resemble their parents. These observations led to his major brilliant inferences: (1) there is a struggle among individuals for resources; (2) those with ''good" or "best" characteristics tend to survive (natural selection); and (3) natural selection results in marked changes to a population. The two biggest challenges to Darwin's theories at the time were "blending" (any change introduced into a population would be blended into extinction very soon,) a theory effectively refuted by Mendel; and Lord Kelvin's assertion that the earth would have been too hot for too long for evolution to have occurred. Nuclear physics has, of course, proven him to be wrong.

The final chapter speculates on the future successful adaptability of humans. Generally, the most successful species are those that adapt easily, inhabit a fairly wide niche, and those that are the most generalized. Man's brain provides an ability to adapt to almost any environment; indeed, to some species, "obligate parasites," are organisms which can survive only in concert with their hosts; e.g., the louse that lived on the heath hen died when the last heath hen died in the 1930s. Are humans the parasites of the earth? If the earth dies so shall we, so it would seem logical that we not "abuse the host." If our intelligence enables us to so change the environment for our short-term comfort, or through nuclear holocaust destroy our surroundings, have we perhaps overspecialized on the brain and over-manipulated ourselves right out of existence? show less

This is as much a personal reminescence as it is a science book; it contains equal parts of both. The science parts are very interesting, as the author details what we know about human evolution and how our knowledge has changed (evolved, if you'll pardon the pun) with the ever increasing hominid fossil record. He also details, briefly, a few of the disputes in science, which is always interesting and helps lay people understand how science is done, and that it isn't always pretty. show more Fortunately, he does not spend an overly abundant amount of time on the disputes, as that can often derail a book that is attempting to explain what we know and how we know it, like the tail wagging the dog (cliche alert). The weaker parts are the personal reminescences, with the exception of the initial story of how he first found Lucy. The parts about the difficulties in working in Ethiopia as a result of the tumultuous political system read well, but much of the other is simply poorly written, or poorly edited, including a great deal of trivial detail that one often finds in beginning authors before they learn how to write. He gives such boring and inessential details as his motel room number and the flight number of the airplane; these should have been ruthlessly chopped out by an editor, but unfortunately editing today has gotten extremely sloppy, and allows such silliness to mar an otherwise interesting and worthwhile piece of work. Overall, a good introduction to the topic for a beginniner, with just enough in-depth description of how species are determined to whet the appetite for a more curious reader to urge them toward further reading. show less

I really adored this. A coffeetable book on paleoanthropology? It's like a dream come true. And it is gorgeous. David Brill's photographs of the skulls and other fossils have an almost 3-D feel, showing the diverse textures, colors, and patina of each specimen. Some books on early hominids have beautifully constructed artist's renditions of what these individuals might have looked like, this one leaves it to the reader's imagination.

The text is by Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who show more discovered the famous "Lucy" skeleton. He gets pretty darn technical in his descriptions of the fossils, delving into the minutiae of teeth, mandibles, fragments of thigh bone and so on... but it's an effective reminder that the science of paleoanthropology requires a great deal of time-consuming, meticulous sleuth-work. I found it fascinating, but I understand that others might find it a bit of a trudge.

Final verdict: Beautiful to look at, extremely detailed. If you're looking for a more accessible or quick-reading summary of early humans and their kin, try The Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins show less

“A glorious success…The science manages to be as exciting and spellbinding as the juiciest gossip” (San Franscisco Chronicle) in the story of the discovery of “Lucy”—the oldest, best-preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human ancestor ever found.
When Donald Johanson found a partical skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues on today. Bursting with all the suspense and show more intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.” By expounding the controversial change Lucy makes in our view of human origins, Johanson provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the history of pealeoanthropology and the colorful, eccentric characters who were and are a part of it. Never before have the mystery and intricacy of our origins been so clearly and compellingly explained as in this astonighing and dramatic book. show less