Making the grade in human evolution

✍ Scribed by John G. Fleagle

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 60 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1060-1538
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6505(1998)6:3<111::aid-evan5>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

The past year has yielded a bumper crop of new books on human evolution. In contrast with the constant parade of both popular and edited books on the origin of modern humans over the past decade, 1 the books listed above offer a refreshing breadth in that all address the entire span of human evolution from the earliest hominids, or before, to modern diversity. Although strikingly different in their size, organization, layout, and purpose, the common scope of the books permits a convenient opportunity to examine the major areas of controversy in paleoanthropology today.

Howells' Getting Here is a real gem. As a longtime fan of Mankind in the Making in earlier decades, I felt that many of the line drawings were old friends and I was reminded that few anthropologists can turn a phrase as adeptly as Howells.