Product Description

This Very Short Introduction traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to the latest fossil finds. Although concentrating on the fossil evidence for human evolution, it also covers the latest genetic evidence about regional variations in the modern human genome that relate to our evolutionary history. Bernard Wood draws on over thirty years of experience to provide an insider's view of the field and some of the personalities in it, and demonstrates that our understanding of human evolution is critically dependent on advances in related sciences such as paleoclimatology, geochronology, systematics, genetics, and developmental biology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68871 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 131 pages

About the Author
Bernard Wood has been involved in human evolution-related research for more than thirty years. He was appointed Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Origins at George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution in 1997. This was the first Professorship to be devoted to the study of Human Origins. Prior to that he was the Derby Professor of Anatomy and the Dean of the School of Medicine at The University of Liverpool. He has published widely about the development of analytical
methods and their application to the fossil record. His survey of the fossil hominin cranial remains from the Kenyan site of Koobi Fora published in 1991 is a key reference for researchers.

Customer Reviews

The biology of human evolution
Human Evolution: A very short introduction, by Bernard Wood, Oxford, 2005, 144 ff.

The biology of human evolution
By Howard A. Jones

Though this is another admirable publication in Oxford's Very Short Introduction series, generally intended for readership by non-specialists, the degree of biological detail here make this more suitable for undergraduate biologists with an interest in paleoanthropology. The author is himself a medically qualified paleoanthropologist, a Professor of Human Origins at the George Washington University in America, so there is much, perhaps necessarily, anatomical detail about the fossil human remains that have been unearthed.

After an introduction that takes us from biblical accounts of our origins, through the work of Vesalius, Lamarck, Darwin, Huxley, Lyell and Mendel, right up to Watson and Crick and the human genome project, we are treated to a discussion of the biological differentiation of humans (hominins) and panins, gorillas and orang-utans - our genetic similarities and anatomical differences.

There are details of oxygen isotope measurement as a guide to past climates; methods of dating fossils and the sediments or rocks in which they are found; and how the age and sex of hominins is determined from the skeletal fragments that anthropologists usually have to be content with. The author points out that while `modern humans have a substantial fossil record . . . the fossil record for chimpanzees [our genetically nearest animal relatives] is virtually non-existent.' So the story is largely one of intelligent piecing together of our ancestry from what remains there are.

It was Darwin who first suggested that, as we are probably related to the apes and they exist largely in Africa, this would be a good place to start looking for human remains. Modern biologists tell us that indeed we did, in the beginning, `come out of Africa'.

This is a well-written book full of fascinating, if at times a little overwhelming, detail. The book about Evolution in general by the Charlesworths in the same series is more accessible to the non-specialist.

Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.

Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

A (short) first guide to human evolution
If you're looking for a short and comprehensible guide to hominin evolution start here. This is an excellent guide to the bewildering array of species leading up to homo sapiens. What it doesn't do - and this point is clearly made - is look at hominin behaviour, but that's not really what I was after. The summary of theories surrounding 'Recent Out of Africa' (or 'Out of Africa 2') is also very clear.