There are books that confidently announce they have all the answers, and then there are books like The Fossil Trail , whose subtitle? How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution ?has the refreshing honesty to admit that science is often a gloriously untidy business. Not only are we trying to reconstruct several million years of human history from a scattering of ancient bones, but we?re also perpetually arguing about whether we?ve reconstructed the right history in the first place. Published by Oxford University Press in 1995, Ian Tattersall?s wonderfully engaging book takes readers behind the scenes of palaeoanthropology, where the popular image of solemn scientists brushing dust from fossils gives way to a far livelier reality. Here, every newly unearthed skull threatens to overturn decades of accepted wisdom, every fragment of jawbone becomes the subject of passionate academic debate, and entire careers can hinge on whether a lump of fossilised bone is really a hip, a shoulder blade, or simply an unusually awkward-looking rock. Tattersall, one of the world?s leading authorities on human evolution, is the perfect guide through this scientific detective story. Rather than simply presenting a neat family tree of human ancestors, he explores how that tree was assembled in the first place?and why it keeps being rearranged. Science, it turns out, is less like completing a jigsaw puzzle and more like discovering that someone has quietly replaced half the pieces while you were making a cup of tea. The title is splendidly evocative. The Fossil Trail conjures images of intrepid explorers crossing deserts in search of humanity?s origins, which is indeed part of the story. But it is also a trail of ideas, mistakes, rivalries and revisions. Every fossil discovery adds another clue, while simultaneously raising three entirely new questions. One begins to suspect that evolution itself had an excellent sense of humour, carefully ensuring that the most important evidence would remain buried until just after somebody published a definitive textbook. One of the book?s greatest pleasures is its insistence that uncertainty is not a weakness but the very engine of scientific progress. Far from pretending that every mystery has been solved, Tattersall demonstrates how hypotheses are tested, challenged and occasionally demolished by the next remarkable discovery. It is a reminder that knowledge is built patiently, often by people willing to spend weeks excavating a hillside in the hope of finding something smaller than a teacup and considerably older than civilisation. This copy is in good condition , showing the gentle signs of having been appreciated rather than neglected. It has clearly survived rather better than the fossils discussed within its pages, most of which endured several million years of geological inconvenience before finally making their literary debut. The binding remains sound, the pages are clean, and it is ready to continue its evolutionary journey onto another bookshelf. As always, Crappy Old Books delights in rescuing books that prove reality is considerably more fascinating than fiction. The Fossil Trail won?t settle every argument about human evolution?and Ian Tattersall would probably argue that no honest book ever could?but it will leave you with a renewed appreciation for the extraordinary chain of discoveries that allows us to peer back through deep time. It also offers one comforting thought: if future archaeologists ever judge our civilisation from the contents of a single rubbish tip, perhaps we should be a little more forgiving of what can be inferred from one rather battered fossil jawbone.

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Detalles bibliogr�ficos

T�tulo: The Fossil Trail - How We Know what We Think We Know about Human Evolution
Editor: Oxford University Press
Fecha de publicaci�n: 1995
Idioma: Ingl�s
ISBN 10: 0195061012
ISBN 13: 9780195061017
Encuadernaci�n: Hardback
Estado: Good

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Sinopsis

One of the most remarkable fossil finds in history occurred in Laetoli, Tanzania, in 1974, when anthropologist Andrew Hill (diving to the ground to avoid a lump of elephant dung thrown by a colleague) came face to face with a set of ancient footprints captured in stone-the earliest recorded steps of out far-off human ancestors, some three million years old. Today we can see a recreation of the making of the Laetoli footprints at the American Museum of Natural History, in a stunning diorama which depicts two of our human forebears walking side by side through a snowy landscape of volcanic ash. But how do we know what these three-million-year-old relatives looked like? How have we reconstructed the eons-long journey from our first ancient steps to where we stand today? In short, how do we know what we think we know about human evolution. In The Fossil Trail, Ian Tattersall, the head of the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us on a sweeping tour of the study of human evolution, offering a colourful history of fossil discoveries and a revealing insider's look at how these finds have been interpreted -and misinterpreted-through time. All the major figures and discoveries are here. We meet Lamark and Cuvier and Darwin (we learn that Darwin's theory of evolution, though a bombshell, was very congenial to a Victorian ethos of progress), right up to modern theorists such as Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Tattersall describes Dubois's work in Java, the may discoveries in South Africa by pioneers such as Raymond Dart and Robert Broom, Louis and Mary Leakey's work at Olduvai Gorge, Don Johanson's famous discovery of "Lucy" (a 3.4 million-year-old femail hominid, some 40 per cent complete), and the more recent discovery of the "Turkana boy", even more complete than "Lucy" and remarkably similar to modern human skeletons. He discusses the may techniques available to analyse finds, from Flourine analysis (developed in the 1950s, it exposed Piltdown as a hoax) and a radiocarbon dating to such modern techniques as electron spin resonance and the analysis of human mitochondrial DNA. He gives us a succinct picture of what we presently think our family tree looks like, with at least three general and perhaps a dozen species through time (though he warns that this greatly underestimates the actual diversity of hominids over the past two million or so years). And he paints a vivid, insider's portrait of paleontology, the dogged work in the broiling sun, searching for a tooth or a fractured corner of bone amid stone litter and shadows, with no guarantee of ever finding anything. And perhaps most important, Tattersall looks at all these great researchers and discoveries with the context of their social and scientific milieu, to reveal the insidious ways that the received to reveal the insidious ways that the received wisdom can shape how we interpret fossil findings, that what we expect to find colours our understanding of what we do find.

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Ian Tattersall is Head of the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History, where he was Curator in Charge of the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution, which opened in 1993.

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Crappy Old Books aims to be the online version of our much endangered high street second hand book stores. Here you will find all sorts of junk that you just couldnt imagine. Crappy Old Books also aims to provide all of these books at great rates. The site was concieved on Monday 23rd Novemeber 2009, and is slowly growing. Hopefully over years it'll have much more to offer and will be a joy to browse through, just like our musty second hand book stores of yore.

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