What a book..."The Book of life." Why it's a modern cartoon book of paleontology. Though its wonderful life-like illustrations and tree-of-life charts are delivered as scientific facts, they are simply graphic theories that illustrators doll up into hypothetical reality. If you like science and fiction, here is a book for you. The realistic pictures belie the text, which says: "We do not even know how to conceptualize, much less to draw the worldview that would place Homo sapiens into proper relationship with the history of life."

Its authors caveat is that "science can only operate as a work in progress without perfect knowledge, and we much therefore leave a great deal out from ignorance --- especially in a historical field like paleontology, where we must work with the strictly limited evidence of a very imperfect fossil record." It's that fossil record, that the book presumes is accurate in its layer-by-layer record through time, that requires scrutiny. The oldest fossils are found in the bottom layers and the youngest in the top layers of rock, but little or no evidence is presented to provide skeptical readers information they can decipher for themselves as to the accuracy of fossil dating by rock layers. Are we to believe, without exception, that the fossil record is progressive from bottom to top? What about fossilized trees that protrude through millions of years of time? They are conveniently omitted. Michael Benton of England's Bristol University, one of the book's contributors, says "All the periods in the geological time scale receive their names in recognition of obvious changes in the fossil record." Yet, to the contrary, Benton adds, "the history of Earth's crust has been far too violent to preserve much more than a random sample."

Its general editor, Stephen Jay Gould, is magnanimous in his promotion of a single theory of man's origins, from monkeys he and most other fossil hunters say.

There may be missing pieces to the paleontological puzzle, but the bone diggers cliam they have finally filled in the evolutional blanks and can conclusively attest to the idea that life evolved from simpler single-celled organisms into modern man. The book's most ardent opponents are taken head on by Gould: "The lack of fossil intermediates had often been cited by creationists as a supposedly prime example for their contention that intermediate forms not only haven't been found in the fossil record but can even be conceived." But Gould holds a trump card. He says: "a lovely series of intermediary steps have now been found in rocks.... in Pakistan. This elegant series, giving lie to the creationist claims, includes the almost perfectly intermediate Ambulocetus (literally, the walking whale), a form with substantial rear legs to complement the front legs already known from many fossil whales, and clearly well adapted both for swimming and for adequate, if limited, movement on land." Oddly, the book never shows a drawing of Ambulocetus, but does have an illustration of a skeleton of a 400-million year old fish with a small underside fin bone the authors claim "must have evolved" into legs in four-legged animals. Man's imagination is not found wanting here. Out of millions of fossils collected and stored in museums, is Ambulocetus the main piece of evidence for evolutionary theory?

Richard Benton says that Charles Darwin had hoped the fossil record would eventually confirm his theory of evolution, but "this has not happened," says Benton. Darwin hoped newly-discovered fossils would connect the dots into a clear evolutionary pattern. The book attempts to do that with its fictional drawings of apes evolving into pre-humans (hominids) and then modern man. Yet the book is not without contradictions. It says: "It remains uncertain whether chimpanzees are more closely related to modern humans or to the gorilla."

The horse is shown as evolving from a small, four-toed to a large one-toed animal over millions of years. There are different varieties of horses, yet there is no evidence that a horse ever evolved from another lower form of animal, nor that horses evolved into any other form of animal.

Another evolutionary puzzle that goes unexplained in the book is the pollination of flowers. How did bees and flowers arrive simultaneously in nature? What directed the appearance of one separate kingdom of life (insects) with that of another?

The book describes 6 1/2-foot millipedes and dragonflies with the wing span of a seagull, but gives no explanation for them. Life was unusual in the past and not all forms fit evolutionary patterns. Consider the popular supposition that life evolved from the sea onto land. That would make more advanced forms of intelligence land bearing. But the aquatic dolphins defy that model, since they are among the smartest mammals.

The book maintains an "out of Africa" scenario for the geographical origins of man, but recent fossil finds in Australia challenge that theory and even the book's authors admit that "a single new skull in an unexpected time or place could still rewrite the primate story." Consider Java man (Homo erectus), once considered the "missing link" and dated at 1.8 million years old. Modern dating methods now estimate Java man to be no more than 50,000 years of age, a fact that was omitted from this text.

Creativity, invention and language are brought out as unique human characteristics. Yet the true uniqueness of man is not emphasized. Humans biologically stand apart from animals in so many ways. Humans can be tickled whereas animals cannot. Humans shed emotional tears, animals do not. The book does not dare venture beyond structure and function, beyond cells and DNA, to ask the question posed by philosophers --- does man have a soul? The Bible speaks of a soul 533 times, this "book of life," not once.

Gould's temple is science. He calls the scientific method "that infallible guide to empirical truth." Science works by elimination. It can only work from experiment to experiment, eliminating what is not true. It can say what is probable, it can never say what is true. Gould appears to begrudge the shackles of science by stepping outside its boundaries in overstating what it can accomplish. Whereas creationists await the day they will stand in judgment before God, for the evolutionists Gould says "Someday, perhaps, we shall me our ancestors face to face." Imagine, standing there looking at a man-like monkey skeleton.

One cannot fault the flaws in this book. After all, it was written by highly evolved apes.

You would have expected more time and detail to the ermergence of the nervous system and the Cambrian Explosion. A more up-to-date section on human evolution (no mention of Ardipithecus Ramidus) but on the whole the book is a good synthesis of the state of the knowledge in this field.

This singular book gives a very nice popular overview of the state-of-the-art in paleontology, chronologically covering everything from the Archean to the evolution of man. It is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book, although the text is perhaps sometimes a bit too technical and dense for the paleontological novice.
And please don't buy some creationists' claims that this is science fiction. The contents of this book is based on material from thousands of scientific articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as "Nature" and "Science", representing the fruits of the hard labour of paleontologists from all over the world. And the fossil record, even if it is convincing in itself, is far from the only support for evolution. Independent evidence for evolution can also be found in biogeography, development, molecular analyses (gene DNA, junk DNA, mtDNA etc), anatomical analyses, and even field observations of new species evolving. This large amount of evidence is why evolution is considered an established and undisputable fact. Of course, if one rather than facts wants comic book fantasies such as humans coexisting with dinosaurs and evil scientists conspiring to hide the truth, then one should look for creationist books instead. Or comic books.

Like I said before, the book is great, but while the book does deal with DNA, I think it fails to point out how limited DNA testing truly is. It traces the RNA in females, which does not disprove that MALE Neanderthals did not mix with females of our blood lines, it just tells us that there are no genes from female Neanderthals in our bloodline. I guess it can still be debated, but the fact is they ARE getting the gene samples from bones, many which are millions of years old. (I give it another four stars so not to mess up my other rating)

The authors really do a great job in doing a detailed study of Neanderthals, their lives and their world. They catalogue the fossils found, examine how we know what we know from the bones, tools and even the ash from the fires.
The only problem is that the book was published in 1993-1994 and does not take into account later DNA tests and the four-year-old child who lived five thousand years after the last of the Neanderthals SHOULD of died (found in 1999)who showed signs of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals. So, while the conclusion in the book that we did not come from Neanderthals may not be correct (and still open to debate), the chapters dealing in detail with Neanderthal tools, camp sites, society, art and burial are a must for people interested in the subject...

Theory that mankind has evolved in relatively near past,and that it colonised the world from africa,exterminating local populations,disagree with a wealth of evidence that sugest some living human populations are product of prodigous and variable forms of interbreeding,operationalised over enormous time span,with all darwinian factors-mutation and selecton,giving rise to distinct and changing populations.We must not dismiss idea of poligenetic origin of populations within mankind,because(this is digression from actual book)it is same reasoning as "crime will stop if we believe that we are all equaly handsome,smart and physicaly strong".Exporation of Racial diferencies is extremely important for medicine,history,archaeology,sociology and a wealth of social and exact sciencies.Truly,an idea that Humankind emanated in a small geographic nucleus and then suddenly spread in all possible directions,exterminating indigenious populations made-up from Neanderthals and Neanderthaloids,contrandict with the fact that among modern human races,characteristics representative of processes such as admixture and amalgamation with this above-mentioned earlier populations,are strongly sugestive of more complex diachronical expressions of anthropogenetic forms. The "Mitochondrial Eve" theory is by far rejected now.Speaking of Coon's theories,it is unjust not to mention the fact that his books always contained extremely unbiased view on this matter-unlike some of his contemporaries.Anthropology does not give rise to racism in its "hooliganic" form.At best,Author's thesis can be substantied with two trends,observed from findings of classic human paleontology-existance of emigrating population(s) with "astenic" metro-morphologic qualities and complex process of amalgamation with autochtonuos population-first in North Africa,then in Eurasia and Americas.Somethink like "Wolkewanderung" from single centre for paleolithic is highly unlikely.

This work provides an excellent summary of the "Out of Africa" model that first burst upon the world in the famous time magazine "New Eve" cover in 1987. Stringer, a paleonotologist, was one of the first--althought not the first as he claims-- to propose that every single person (outside of Africa) now alive is the descendant of a small group of humans who left Africa between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago. Until the advent of "DNA" reverse transcriptase technology (commonly known from its use in criminal investigations) Stringer's theory was just one more interpretation of mute bones and stones. The revolutionary work of Mary Ravullo, amongst others, now proves that all humans are indeed descended from a tiny population (probably 2-3000 "breeding" females) 200,000 years ago. The DNA evidence shows that there is far more genetic diversity within Africa than in the rest of the world. Until the DNA discoveries, Stringer was pretty much out in the wilderness against the paleontological orthodoxy that the "races" of mankind had evolved from populations of Neanderthal and H. erectus. Despite the counter-intuitive nature of this "multi-regional" hypothesis, the skimpy fossil record seemed to support it. The DNA evidence, however, is so overwhelmingly solid it seems unlikely to ever be overthrown; unlike the fossil evidence, in which conclusions are much like figure skating scores, highly subjective and open to endless debate.

When sticking to the science of bones and blood, McKie and Stringer produce solid scientific writing for the non-Academic.

However, they severely mar the book with character assassination of Stringer's paleontological rivals, a puerile political agenda and environazi propaganda. Instead of analysizing the work of said rivals, the authors stoop to gossipy anecdotes to smear them. It was totally unnecessary and a good editor wouldn't have let them get away with it. Eliminating these distractions and a clearer focus on the science (and its conclusions) would have made this book a classic.

Another grievous, and, again, totally unnecessary addition, are the authors ignorant and slanderous remarks about American politics and American conservatives. To a British or Continental audience, these observations are probably accepted at face value. To anyone conversant with the American political scene, (e.g. page 246) their remarks are baseless, slanderous and make the authors look ridiculous. They also fling assaults on the book The Bell Curve distorting, with slash and burn attacks, what Herrenstein and Murray actually wrote; they create a caricature and proceed to attack it instead of the real book.

Finally, the concluding chapters launch into a litany of the Far Left's enivronmental myths and fantasies--conjuring up everything from the Global Warming hoax, to the racist "noble savage" protrayal of American Indians, to the man as the "killer" ape "destroying" the planet. Not surprisingly, little proof, beyond the usual ritual incantations of the environut creed, is offered.

The authors stray way beyond their ken in many areas and their ignorance and prejudice are embarrasingly on display. Without these flaws, the authors fluent and easily read prose would have made this book a landmark work. With them, it is reduced to a mishmash of scientific fact and calumny that ultimately hurt Stringer's cause far more than they advance it.

This book should be read in conjunction with my own Race, Evolution, and Behavior so that all the missing pieces of the puzzle can be seen. The parts of the book that review human origins are competent and very readable. Unfortunately, major errors appear in the book when it descends to the politically obligatory trashing of both The Bell Curve and my own work. In my case, instead of taking the time to read, cite, and critique my 1995 book intelligently, the authors rely mainly on a 1994 account of it in the tabloid magazine Rolling Stone! The basic political argument of African Exodus is as follows: "In any case, the story of our African Exodus makes it unlikely that there are significant structural or functional differences between the brains of the world's various peoples" (p. 181). The logic here is especially odd given that other parts of the book present a fascinating discussion of how populations vary in jaw size and in number of teeth. For example, page 215 states: "Among Europeans, for example, it has been found that up to 15 percent of people have at least two wisdom teeth missing...while in east Asia, the figure can be as much as 30 percent in some areas." As an example of evolutionary pressure, the book describes how before modern medicine, impacted wisdom teeth often became infected and led to death. The authors appear to find it plausible for evolution to act through differential death rates resulting from differences in the number of wisdom teeth and yet find it implausible that death rates could vary in different regions because of differential intelligence as an adaptation to extreme cold. While Stringer and McKie describe how noses and skin color have been shaped in different regions, they deny that there are any cognitive differences and they withhold from readers the modern literature on brain size and IQ. Perhaps least forthright in this regard is the citation (p. 177) of Beals et al.'s (1984) study of worldwide variation in cranial size (which I cited earlier) and their attribution of these racial differences only to "climate," as though climate is not a likely potent source of natural selection for intelligence.