Another day, another 10 pages. The human evolution chapter now stretches about 40 pages long, and it still requires quite a bit of detail. (It will, of course, balloon again when illustrations are worked out. One particular illustration of the branching tree of hominin evolution will require that I do some digging in the literature to find the best current estimates for the ages of particular genera and species.) Even so, it now presents a more-or-less coherent story, from early discoveries of stone tools in Europe to our strange position as the one surviving variety of human. Now I have to go back to the beginning.
More than any other chapter, this one is full of twists and turns. There is no intellectual "march of progress" from the first discoveries of stone tools to our present conception of human evolution. While I can't say my approach is unique, it is not the standard trope, and I have tried to use changing ideas about humanity as a guide. This has allowed me to bring studies of living primates into the story, from Jane Goodall's work at Gombe to the gesticulations of Koko the gorilla, as they are just as important to our perception of ourselves as fossils.
The trick is telling the story in a sensible fashion without giving too much away too soon. The model of science I grew up with, and to an extent I think is still spoon-fed to us, is that the significance of new discoveries is quickly realized. This is not what I have found in my research. New discoveries influence new ideas which await further confirmation, are ignored, or are rejected. Such is the nature of science, and new hypotheses require a lot of argument and evidence before they can be brought into the bigger picture. It is somewhat like dealing with a particularly difficult puzzle; the next piece you pick up might seem insignificant until you re-arrange a few bits you had mistakenly connected before, and only then does the new bit make sense. Even then, something you find later might shake things up again. It is not as if everything is numbered and you are simply waiting to find the next bit to correctly connect in sequence.
I hope to clean up this chapter quite a bit this weekend. I'm sure I'll be agonizing about edits over the holiday break, as well. Then I'll have another look on the chapters on birds and whales, and once they are in order, I will get my proposal together. I hope to have it ready within the next two weeks. Who knows? Maybe I'll get an agent for Christmas...
Here is the Wordle for the last iteration of the human evolution chapter;
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For previous posts dealing with this project, see the "Books" and "Great Book Project" archives.
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Hi, Brian.
I was wondering about the supposed asiatic origins of humanity [a.k.a. de genere Homo et similia] formerly presented in the early 20s/30s as a scientific anthropological theory [not for fun; that's a topic in my thesis]. Can you help me? What was the palaeontological background for this hypothesis? The "Out Of Asia" theory was a 'remnant'/a "legacy" from romantic european literature...but it turned out as a scientific theory. I'm asking you because of your great experience accumulated in this field ("History Of Science" lato sensu).
Are you able to provide me some references &/or a possible post written by you - which I've missed, unfortunately?
[vide Weidenreich, F., 1939, On the earliest representatives of the modern mankind recovered on the soil of east Asia, Bull. Nat. Hist. Soc. Peking, 13, 161-174 and a couple of articles by the same author about Sinanthropus in the early 40s]
As far as I know here's a valuable recent ref I've found:
> Recent human evolution in East Asia and Australasia, by Peter Brown, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B. (1992) 337 [with a rich bibliography]
Thanks Brian and, as usual, I'm [we are] looking forward to reading your brilliant book!
Keep up the good work; I'm sure it will be a great cultural contribution
Leo