Overview
Two discoveries of early human relatives, one in 1924 and one in 2003, radically changed scientific thinking about our origins. Dean Falk, a pioneer in the field of human brain evolution, offers this fast-paced insider's account of these discoveries, the behind-the-scenes politics embroiling the scientists who found and analyzed them, and the academic and religious controversies they generated. The first is the Taung child, a two-million-year-old skull from South Africa that led anatomist Raymond Dart to argue that this creature had walked upright and that Africa held the key to the fossil ancestry of our species. The second find consisted of the partial skeleton of a three-and-a-half-foot-tall woman, nicknamed Hobbit, from Flores Island, Indonesia. She is thought by scientists to belong to a new, recently extinct species of human, but her story is still unfolding. Falk, who has studied the brain casts of both Taung and Hobbit, reveals new evidence crucial to interpreting both discoveries and proposes surprising connections between this pair of extraordinary specimens.
Full Product Details
Author: Dean Falk
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.363kg
ISBN: 9780520274464
ISBN 10: 0520274466
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 03 October 2011
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
The book is part historical drama, part neurological crash course and part autobiography . . . . The combination is refreshing. -- Wall Street Journal
Brilliant... Sparkles with scholarship and wit. --Nature The book is part historical drama, part neurological crash course and part autobiography ... The combination is refreshing. --Wall Street Journal Infectious... This book provides a powerful reminder that fossils should hold value to those beyond sometimes argumentative paleoanthropologists. --Qtly Review of Biology
Infectious. . . . This book provides a powerful reminder that fossils should hold value to those beyond sometimes argumentative paleoanthropologists. -- Kristian J. Carlson, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg * Qtly Review Of Biology * The book is part historical drama, part neurological crash course and part autobiography . . . . The combination is refreshing. * Wall Street Journal * Brilliant. . . . Sparkles with scholarship and wit. * Nature *
Author Information
Dean Falk is a Senior Scholar at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her previous books include Finding Our Tongues: Mothers, Infants, and the Origin of Language and Braindance, Revised and Expanded Edition: New Discoveries about Human Origins and Brain Evolution.
