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The Accidental Species Misunderstandings of Human Evolution PDF

218 Pages·2015·1.014 MB·English
by  GeeHenry
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THE ACCIDENTAL SPECIES The Accidental Species MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION Henry Gee The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London Henry Gee is a senior editor at Nature and the author of such books as Jacob’s Ladder, In Search of Deep Time, The Science of Middle-earth, and A Field Guide to Dinosaurs, the last with Luis V. Rey. He lives in Cromer, Norfolk, England, with his family and numerous pets. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2013 by Henry Gee All rights reserved. Published 2013. Printed in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-28488-0 (cloth) ISBN- 13: 978-0-226-04498-9 (e- book) DOI: 10.7208/ chicago/ 9780226044989.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gee, Henry, 1962– author. The accidental species : misunderstandings of human evolution / Henry Gee. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-226-28488-0 (cloth : alkaline paper) ISBN 978-0-226-04498-9 (e- book) 1. Human evolution. 2. Human beings. I. Title. GN281.G36 2013 599.93′8—dc23 2013016599 o This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/ NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). To the memory of John Maddox (1925– 2009): colleague, mentor, and friend, in the hope that he’d have approved Contents Preface: No More Missing Links ix 1 AN UNEXPECTED PARTY 1 2 ALL ABOUT EVOLUTION 20 3 LOSING IT 42 4 THE BEOWULF EFFECT 57 5 SHADOWS OF THE PAST 73 6 THE HUMAN ERROR 97 7 THE WAY WE WALK 112 8 THE DOG AND THE ATLATL 124 9 A CLEVERNESS OF CROWS 135 10 THE THINGS WE SAY 146 11 THE WAY WE THINK 157 Afterword: The Tangled Bank 169 Notes 173 Index 197 Preface: No More Missing Links Here’s the thing. It’s the curious phenomenon in which otherwise sane and rational news reporters lose all sense of reason or proportion when confronted with anything to do with human evolution, no matter how trivial or (ultimately) inconsequential it might be. Scientists make all kinds of discoveries every day, but almost all add just one small brick to a wall of knowledge that’s sky high. Very few are deserving of any press coverage at all, let alone in the tumescent tones reserved for hu- man evolution. Yet it seems that any paper on human evolution is fair game for the breathlessly orgasmic treatment usually reserved for voice- overs for commercials for expensive ice cream. If all discoveries are treated the same way, one is forced to wonder, then no discrimina- tion can be made between them, and the eff ect is a kind of dull infan- tilization in which the signifi cance of the discovery is obscured, and science as a whole is done a disservice. A recent case was the media brouhaha surrounding the discovery of a fossil primate called Darwinius masillae. If you care to look up the scientifi c paper in which Darwinius is described, you can—it’s freely ac- cessible to anyone.1 If you do, you’ll fi nd a perfectly fi ne description of a rare and beautiful fossil. If you read carefully, you’ll see that Dar- winius masillae is one of a number of primates belonging to an extinct group called adapids. Darwinius is a particularly fi ne specimen of an adapid, but it does not reveal any exceptional insight into the evolu- tion of adapids or of primates as a whole. The evolutionary signifi cance of adapids is debated by specialists, but most agree that they are more closely related to lemurs and bush babies than modern monkeys or apes, let alone humans. The media circus (there is no other word) implied something rather diff erent—that the fossil represented a crucial stage in human evolu-

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