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The best book on human evolution I've ever read. Niles Eldredge, Curator, Department of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History the most concise, most readable, and most thoughtful treatment available on the subject...a must-read Donald Johnson, Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University

The latest entry into the who-are-we-and-where-did-we-come-from debate is from Tattersall (The Fossil Trail, 1995, etc.), the highly regarded fossil expert and curator of the department of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Mincing no words and keeping the pot of controversy ready to boil over, Tattersall asserts that there is no question that the Neanderthals came to a dead end without heirs. While they coexisted 40,000 years ago with Cro-Magnons, it was the latter who replaced them and are our ancestors. Among his reasons for this assertion are the elegant artworks found in Cro-Magnon cave sites, bespeaking symbolic reasoning; a tool kit that demonstrates a quantum leap in abstract thinking and planning; and the anatomical arrangements that afford speech and therefore language - all absent from Neanderthal remains. However, in his review of the primate and hominid literature, he chooses not to make invidious comparisons (Neanderthals are not dumb humans) so much as to say that the various species played by different sets of rules. Human evolution, he says, echoing colleagues Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould, is no linear ascent, but an episodic affair with assorted species coexisting (hut presumably not interbreeding) until the emergence of the H. sapiens. We are the end-products of unpredictable climate change, habitual upright posture (which freed our hands), brain growth, and the capacity for speech. But finally we are left with the not very hopeful picture of humanity dominating the globe. Further, we might be end products in another sense: We are so populous that there are no longer the pockets of isolated populations that allow mutations to develop into new species. Tattersall concludes that we are stuck with our old familiar - and potentially dangerous - serves, and we urgently need to learn how best to live with that fact - so that, we might add, we can continue such learned arguments on human origins to the next round. (Kirkus Reviews)

In terms of science, there isn't really anything new in this overview of how we got to be the way we are. However, Tattersall, who works at the American Museum of Natural History, manages to encapsulate a great deal of information about evolution in general, and human origins in particular, in a neat package that places emphasis on how we differ from other animals. Gratifyingly concise compared with some of the evolutionary tomes around today and well worth reading even if you are familiar with the likes of Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker. (Kirkus UK)

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