The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

I imagine an Indiana Jones movie patterned after real life would be a twelve-hour reel of Indie walking at a crouch through a gully under a broiling sun, staring at the dirt while sweat drips from his nose, until at the end, right before the credits, he bends forward, picks up an arrowhead, and shouts, “I got one!”

Hunting for the past is not glamorous. It’s tough work, often in rough conditions and unstable regions. Paleoanthropology, then, attracts strong personalities with the force of will to endure not only all that field work requires, but also academic politics, bureaucratic mazes, and journalistic spin.

This is the story of these strong personalities, and Gibbons aptly charts the collaborations and conflicts attending the show more hunt for hominid fossils. She’s careful and balanced, which is important given that many of those whose triumphs and defeats she chronicles are still active in their field.

I enjoyed this and learned a lot from it, mainly that I don’t think I’d make a good paleoanthropologist. I like competition, but I’m not sure I’d be committed enough to generate the 1982 memo that landed on the desk of Vice President George H. W. Bush: “The exceedingly cut-throat level of competition in Eastern African anthropology is a long-standing problem.” show less

Really enjoyed this account of the search for our earliest ancestors and the cutthroat world of paleontology. Just the right mix of science and anecdote involving the often grim battles for access to archeological sites in Africa.

As the subtitle indicates, this was indeed a race. One wonders what these men and women might have achieved if they had worked together instead of with intense rivalries. The search to solve the mystery of human evolution is a fascinating subject and science writer Gibbons' writing retains that engrossing quality while being easily understood. Although discoveries continue and the picture of human evolution is becoming clearer, there is still no definitive answer.

A very interesting look at some of the most important hominid fossil discoveries of the last 15 years, and the paleoanthropologists who discovered them. Ann Gibbons is a correspondent for Science magazine, and has covered human evolution for more than a decade. She does a fantastic job in this book of writing about evolution in a highly accurate, easy-to-read manner, without overly simplifying the topic for a mainstream audience.

It is rare for an evolution book to go into detail about the turmoil amongst scientists, and Gibbons does so in an even handed way. We get to hear about the dangers involved in the hunt for the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, in regions subject to days-long sandstorms, bandits, and civil war. You also show more see how basic human emotions (ambition! jealousy!) and politics can interfere with the progression of science, especially in such a sensitive scientific topic. In fact, we almost hear more about the tensions in the field than the actual fossils themselves, which would be my only major complaint. show less

A very good and readable primer of where we are in the race to find the oldest hominid fossil. Incredible amount of new evidence just in the last ten years. Makes me want to fly off to Africa and search for old bones.

This book is a fascinating look into the world of modern Archaeology. The author gives a good summary of recent finds and the ages/characteristics of each, as well as a window on the situation of competition and rivalry among archaeologists.After reading this overview, it is possible to read further on each find - I am eager to read _Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins_ by Dr. Donald Johanson, which is on our New Nonfiction bookshelf at the library.

After have read many books on paleontology, this book is fresh because it focuses on the paleontologists and their conflicts. Makes their lives interesting.