In the last fifty years, there has been an explosion of information about evolution and about human evolution in particular. Not a year passes without some new fossils being discovered. Fossils, bones and artifacts are continually subjected to new methods of testing - for date, even for DNA content. Every few years, palaeontologists or geneticists announce some new conclusions about human origins. But information is not knowledge and knowledge is not understanding. How does it all fit together? How can we bridge the immense historical gap between the australopithecines - who were simply bipedal apes - and the human race as it lives today?
There are excellent textbooks - notably Richard Klein's The Human Career - but they are far too technical for the general reader. Most books are written by specialists, people who (unlike Darwin, Wallace or Huxley) spend their whole lives digging up fossils or sitting in a laboratory. Specialists guard the frontiers of their own specialism and are correspondingly careful not to trespass on the specialisms of others. They are wrapped up in technical detail and terrified of sticking their necks out. Some rather obvious conclusions are not stated because everyone is too reluctant to challenge accepted dogmas.
Yet the material is now there. Some really excellent research has been done in particular areas. Books like Cohen's The Food Crisis in Prehistory (on the origins of agriculture) Keeley's War before Civilization (on tribal warfare) and Wrangham's Catching Fire (on fire and cooking) have changed our perceptions completely on their subject matter. These books and others have links to them on this site. But somebody needs to put it all together into a coordinated picture. I have tried to do this in a small way, because, unfortunately, it seems to me that no one else has done it satisfactorily, and because, not being an academic with a career to think of, I have (I suppose) nothing to lose.
Mike Munford
November 2011
Contents