Overview

Ever since our early ancestors first stood up on their two feet, taking on an unusual stance with a peculiar gait, natural selection has guided the process of human evolution toward the species we are today. But the evolutionary road to """"Homo sapiens"""" was not easy; indeed, there was no road to follow. There was just a dim patch cut out by the contingencies of chance, coincidence and chaos. Could chance really have played an important role in the evolution of such a sophisticated, sentient being? It is undoubtedly so! From the source of the very genes that construct our bodies to the origin of our species, chance was not only operating - it was absolutely necessary for the evolutionary process. Likewise, biological and environmental coincidences shaped our bodies and pushed our ancestors in odd directions along the dim path, leaving us to deal with opportunities as well as hindrances. Each step led directly to another. Had any link in the evolutionary chain of events been slightly different, then our species would not be as it is today ...or our ancestors may not have survived at all. Dependence on such subtle contingencies is the signature of chaos. Anthropologist Jeffrey McKee portrays a story of research on the cutting edge of both paleontology and evolutionary theory. His book delves into the excitement and frustrations of excavations at the world-renowned fossil sites of Taung and Makapansgat, two South African site that provide key evidence elucidating the initial conditions of human origins. Using a concoction of evidence ranging from fossil excavations to computer simulations McKee then lays the foundations for our scientific debates. Probing the depths of research with a variety of perspectives, the author demonstrates how the chain of human evolution was riddled with chance, coincidence and chaos. The book projects the author's personal feeling of wonder and sense of humour in order to make the new scientific revolution accessible to the general reader, while being firmly grounded with hard-hitting research so as to be of importance to the scientific community. """"The Riddled Chain"""" then concludes with a thought-provoking assessment of the implications of the latest evolutionary research for the present and future conditions of humankind.

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9780813527833

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Reviews

Add culture to the alliterative subtitle and clever to describe the approach of the author, for this is indeed an intelligent and provocative account of human evolution. McKee (Anthropology/Ohio State) is a theorist as well as a field paleoanthropologist. He has worked on digs at the storied sites in South Africa (Magapansgat and Taung) where Raymond Dart discovered a famous fossil of a child hominid, not an ape, estimated to be about 2.5 million years old. The structure of the skull provided McKee with a starting-point for his thesis: there is chaos in the world, he claims, because a change in some initial circumstance in our evolutionary historyone that occurred by chance (gene mutation)has had epoch-making and unpredictable repercussions. The Taung child was a small-brained, large-faced biped. In the process of adapting to standing and walking, McKee speculates, the spinal cord attached to the brain moved centrally so that the head would eventually sit squarely over the spinal column and face forward. These genetic and morphological events, along with evidence from other fossil finds and computer simulations, led McKee to conclude that evolution is self-catalytic (i.e., self-driven). It is the product of change, coincidence, and chaos, climaxing in human evolution with culture, that has increased our adaptability. McKee discredits the popular theory that a climatic cooling led to a loss of forest and the growth of savannahs, thereby driving our ancestors to bipedalism. He also includes a wonderful chapter cataloguing the compromises in anatomy and physiology our species lives with, and he speculates that we are preserving maladaptive traits because of our medical ingenuity. McKees wonderfully rich and thought-provoking text, told with style and winning flashes of humor, is a refreshing entry into the always contentious and endlessly fascinating story of human origins. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

JEFFREY K. MCKEE teaches in the Department of Anthropology and Evolution, Ecology, & Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University. He is the co-author of Understanding Human Evolution.

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