Adventures in the Bone Trade: The Race to Discover Human Ancestors in Ethiopia’s Afar Depression

by Jon Kalb

Over the past 25 years, a stream of fossil and artifact discoveries in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia has produced the longest single record of human ancestors in the world. Many of the fossils found in this region are the missing links leading to modern humans. This book chronicles the exploration of this unique desert area, focusing especially on the 1970s when the valley was mapped and many fossils and archeological sites were discovered. The author gives his personal account of the 25 years he spent researching the region.
As co-founder of the team that discovered Lucy, Jon Kalb has first-hand knowledge of the research that was involved in the findings of this region and of the intense rivalry that has accompanied those findings. He discusses the political drama of Ethiopia and the effects this chaos had on the Afar. This book covers the scientific discoveries of the area, the author's own explorations and findings, and the political struggles involved with these discoveries.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, Science, Archaeology, Evolution

404 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2000

About the author

Jon Kalb, born August 17, 1941, in Houston, Texas, is a research geologist (ret) with the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory (Texas Memorial Museum), University of Texas at Austin. He received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory in 1968, a graduate fellowship from [[Johns Hopkins University]] in 1969, and a B Sc. from American University in 1970.
Kalb was a founder of the International Afar Research Expedition that recovered the 3.3 million year old Lucy skeleton, and later director of the Ethiopia-based mission that pioneered explorations in the Middle Awash, revealing some of the most prolific deposits bearing early hominid fossils and artifacts in the world. Discoveries included a nearly complete hyper-robust skull of a 600,000-year-old pre-Neanderthal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kalb

Reviews

[dejah_thoris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning: This book is a slog for the first 50-100 pages. I almost gave up on it, which is incredibly rare for me. The topic is geology and Kalb is a geologist, so he provides incredibly detailed descriptions of the terrain they're exploring. Yes, geology has a HUGE impact on dating hominid remains, and you'll appreciate some of his later descriptions on how he dated fossils in the Awash Valley because it involves reconstructing multiple shifted layers from the intersection of three tectonic plates. But the first 50 pages or so was REALLY dry reading that made me worry about the rest of the book.

Fortunately, it picks up shortly after those terrain descriptions end. There's infighting among researchers, accusations of CIA links, fighting between researchers from different nations, fighting to get Ethiopians trained to do their own field work, fighting with the Ethiopian government and the local chieftains to even have the right to excavate. Oh, it's all very political, complicated and tiring, but it makes for an EXCELLENT read. It also serves to remind those of us who read science books that it's as messy a discipline as literature studies.

Read this one if you like exciting African adventure combined with political and personal intrigue. (Science like anything else IS all politics.)