Picture of author.
6+ Works 159 Members 4 Reviews

About the Author

Dean Falk is a Distinguished Research Professor and the Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University and a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Among her earlier books are Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of show more Language and 'The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution. show less
Image credit: Dean Falk [credit: Florida State University]

Works by Dean Falk

Associated Works

The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution (2012) — Contributor — 19 copies

Tagged

Common Knowledge

Members

Reviews

I read two thirds of this, but can't bother finishing it. The theory is interesting, but unprovable either way. Reading the German translation may be part of the problem.
½
 
Flagged
MarthaJeanne | 1 other review | Mar 5, 2018 |
Now I know more about human, hominid, australopithecine and related brains that I ever thought I'd know. As it turns out, there is a discipline called paleoneurology which main subject is the endocasts of brains of fossils which may be in our ancestor tree. The human brain is a soft tissue, it disintegrates first so chances of fossilized brains of species from long ago is almost non-existent (they will be destroyed before they fossilize). And here come the endocasts - as it turns out, the brain leaves a pretty good print on the internal side of one's head - so when it is sufficiently preserved, the scientists can do a lot with those prints. And this is what Dean Falk does in her day to day job.

The book takes two fossils - the Taung child (found in 1925) and LB1 (the Hobbit found in 2003 in Flores) - and compares their discovery and acceptance from the community. The reason why these two are used is very simple - both allow for full endocasts and both had been studied this way (plus just now, any book about fossils that does not mention LB1 probably has no chance to be published... ). It all starts with a chance discovery in South Africa in 1925 and with the right man at the right place. Fast forward to more recent times and the author finds a huge mistake in the interpretation of part of the brain of that chance discovery (which noone else had found before) and follow a long time of papers in both directions. Falk does not bore us with all of those but the tone in that part of the book is a definitive "I am right, everyone else is wrong" and "Alone against the world". Don't get me wrong - I suspect that she actually is right (I do not have the training to figure it out) but the book almost read as a defense against anyone saying anything else. . It does not help much when she finds that Dart (who found the Taung child and interpreted the endocast) had written in his never published monograph some more details that are immediately announced as an agreement with her theory. Reading them, they are an agreement if someone already agrees with the theory; otherwise it is a case of reading a text in a way that may not necessarily be the way it was written... But besides these issues, the text is really interesting and informative, with a lot of details and observations that make this part of the book worth reading.

And then the Flores bones show up and the attention is shifted to them. Because this time it is Falk and her team that will be the first to work on the brain and endocast of the new species (if it is a new species). And there follows a fascinating tale of science, rivalries, damaged bones (what kind of morons can damage this kind of unique bones and call themselves scientists) and a lot more brains. The almost sulking author from the first part of the book is gone and is replaced by the scientist that needs to defend a position (a jibe towards the science writers and their attempts to give equal time to all the theories is not missed of course) and that is trying to unearth the truth. And because she had worked on Taung as well, because the field she works in is pretty narrow, she can draw the parallels between previous discoveries and this one and to show how the story repeats itself. One wonders though - aren't the scientists falling into the "this happened before so it must be this way" trap...

Another very valuable part of the book is the behind the scenes look of how these bones are excavated and what happens after that, of how the modern science work outside of the laboratories and of how unclear it is what had been really happening in the past (more than once, Falk explains how a certain fossil belongs to a species but half the scientists think something else). And then come the journal articles and responses, the protocols for discoveries announcement, all the information that someone that is not a scientist would not know. And then there is the accusation of a lie (called with a different name but...) against a team of scientists and the specimen search that is a lot more complicated than I would have thought. Falk uses the book to defend her hypothesis of what species the Flores bones are and where these small people came from (which is why scientists write books after all) but she does not just ignore the ones that disagree. A huge number of theories are tested and proved to be invalid - and the story of how and why is what makes most of the second part of the book.

Of course at the moment the book cannot be finished. Noone really knows what the Flores bones are. It is even possible that the question will remain open for a very long time. But the simple fact of finding them had caused a huge stir in the sciences concerned with evolution and human origin and had made most of them reevaluate what they had believed.

It is a book worth reading, even if in parts it gets way too technical. And the annoying parts just give character to the book - because despite all, the book achieves its objectives and puts two major fossils side to side and examines their influence on the science and the world as a whole.
… (more)
4 vote
Flagged
AnnieMod | 1 other review | Apr 16, 2013 |
This is interesting so far. The idea behind it all is our upright walking created smaller birth canals (well established) which created the need for smaller, more dependent babies (well established), which created the need to talk to babies because the babies weren't strong enough to cling to mom's tummy or back and thus got laid down nearby while mom took care of various tasks (makes sense...). This created motherese (debatable) which was the beginning of language (the author's pet theory). Totally interesting.… (more)
 
Flagged
amaraduende | 1 other review | Mar 30, 2013 |
This book describes two fossil findings that have and are forcing rethinkings of the origins of man: Raymond Dart's "Taung Child" and the recent Homo floresiensis ("Hobbit", or "Flo"). Much has been written about Dart and his findings, though Dean Falk adds details from his unpublished work that shed new light on the depth of Dart's insight into the place of Australopithecus africanus in human evolution. For me, the best parts of the book were the sections on the recent (2003) findings of Homo floresiensis, and the search to determine just where they fit into the growing "bush" of human ancestors and relatives. Much space is given to discussions and illustrations of brain features, comparing floresiensis to other primitive hominins, as well as responding to claims that "Flo" might have been a recent microcephalic human. Though this claim ("substantiated" by several scientists with apparently bogus data), and claims of cretinism and other physical conditions, have been largely put to rest, the author shows how both discoveries, though nearly 80 years apart, suffered from much sniping from scientists whose pet theories were being upset. I'm just waiting for DNA evidence (hard to get!) to shed more light on "Flo".… (more)
½
 
Flagged
steve823 | 1 other review | Jan 13, 2012 |

Lists

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
6
Also by
1
Members
159
Popularity
#132,375
Rating
½ 3.6
Reviews
4
ISBNs
19
Languages
2

Charts & Graphs