What do you think?
Rate this book
Principles of Human Evolution
Principles of Human Evolution presents an in-depth introduction to paleoanthropology and the study of human evolution. Focusing on the fundamentals of evolutionary theory and how these apply to ecological, molecular genetic, paleontological and archeological approaches to important questions in the field, this timely textbook will help students gain a perspective on human evolution in the context of modern biological thinking. The second edition of this successful text features the addition of Robert Foley, a leading researcher in Human Evolutionary Studies, to the writing team. Strong emphasis on evolutionary theory, ecology and behavior and scores of new examples reflect the latest evolutionary theories and recent archaeological finds. More than a simple update, the new edition is organized by issue rather than chronology, integrating behavior, adaptation and anatomy. A new design and new figure references make this edition more accessible for students and instructors.
568 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 1997
5 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Roger Lewin
59 books17 followersRoger Lewin (born 1944) is a British prize-winning science writer and author of 20 books.
Lewin was a staff member of New Scientist in London for nine years. He went to Washington, D.C. to write for Science for ten years as News Editor. An example article was "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire", 21, November 1980, vol. 210, pp 883–887. Lewin wrote three books with Richard Leakey. He became a full-time freelance writer in 1989 and concentrated on writing books. In 1989 Roger Lewin won the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books for Bones of Contention.
In 2000, Lewin formed Harvest Associates with wife Birute Regine for business consulting. Together they wrote, The Soul at Work: Unleashing the Power of Complexity Science for Business Success, Orion Business Books (1999), republished as Weaving Complexity & Business: Engaging the Soul at Work, Texere (2000). He is a member of the Complexity Research Group at the London School of Economics.
Lewin was a staff member of New Scientist in London for nine years. He went to Washington, D.C. to write for Science for ten years as News Editor. An example article was "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire", 21, November 1980, vol. 210, pp 883–887. Lewin wrote three books with Richard Leakey. He became a full-time freelance writer in 1989 and concentrated on writing books. In 1989 Roger Lewin won the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books for Bones of Contention.
In 2000, Lewin formed Harvest Associates with wife Birute Regine for business consulting. Together they wrote, The Soul at Work: Unleashing the Power of Complexity Science for Business Success, Orion Business Books (1999), republished as Weaving Complexity & Business: Engaging the Soul at Work, Texere (2000). He is a member of the Complexity Research Group at the London School of Economics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2025
A WELL-KNOWN SCIENCE WRITER EXPANDS AND UPDATES HIS TEXTBOOK
Science writer Roger Lewin wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “This volume is the evolutionary product of the third edition of ‘Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction,’ through processes of expansion and diversification. The overall structure is based on … its orientation of viewing human evolutionary history in the context of behavioral ecology---but with many chapters substantially enlarged and new ones added, forming an expansion, as well as an update, of the previous edition. The result is a fuller, more comprehensive approach to the study of human prehistory… The past three years have witnessed an extraordinarily rich crop of fossil discoveries… The origin of modern humans remains a lively topic of discussion and disagreement in paleoanthropology… The treatment of modern evolutionary theory is much more extensive in this book compared with its predecessor… Systematics has gained even further importance during the past few years, as anthropologists strive for methods to resolve issues of evolutionary relationship.”
He explains, “If evolution were steadily progressive, forming a program of constant improvement, the transformation of ape to human could be viewed as a series of novel adaptations, each one naturally preparing for and leading to the next. Such a scenario would involve continual progress… going in a particular direction. From our vantage point, where we can view the end-product, it is tempting to view the process in that way because we can actually see that all those steps did actually take place. This slant, however, ignores the fact that evolution tends to work in a rather halting, unpredictable fashion, shifting abruptly from one ‘adaptive plateau’ to another. These adaptive plateaus are species, of course, and each was adaptively successful and persisted for a considerable time .. before a rapid evolutionary shift, perhaps propelled by external forces, yielded a new species with a new adaptation.” (Pg. 15)
He notes, “Debate over human origins has advanced substantially in recent years, particularly in broadening the scientific basis of the discussions… Two principal themes have been recurrent in this century of paleoanthropology, each of which has been seen to be more or less important at different times, depending on the ebb and flow of intellectual tides. First is the relationship between humans and apes; how close, how distant? Second is the ‘humanness’ of our direct ancestors.” (Pg. 19)
He acknowledges, “Unless fossils or artifacts are recovered directly from the sediments in which they were buried soon after they died, not even the most securely dated volcanic tuff can be used to supply a date with certainty. An object lying on the land surface may have come from quite different sedimentary layers. One development that is helping to overcome these problems is the ever-finer physical and chemical analysis of mineral matrix that may be accreting to the fossil or artifact. With this type of assessment, it is sometimes possible to identify the layer that originally contained the object, if the layer still exists at the site.” (Pg. 93)
He admits, “the divergence of the hominoids and cercopithecoids … [is agreed to be] between 31 and 22 millions years ago… but no common ancestor has been identified… Another disagreement has occurred over the identity of the ancestral stock of the living hominoids… The uncertainty partly stems from the fact that the fossil discoveries highlight just how sparse the record really is.” (Pg. 201)
He points out, “Proconsul fossils have been found at several sites in Kenya, and this species is probably the best-known Miocene ape… Interestingly, the hand had a large, opposable thumb, which makes Proconsul more like humans than either monkeys or apes. This feature suggests that Proconsul might have had considerable manipulative skills, perhaps including making and using simple tools, such as stripped twigs.” (Pg. 207)
He states, “No undisputed australopithecine fossil has been found outside the African continent. In fact, most scholars agree that hominines did not leave Africa until approximately 2 million years ago, when Homo Erectus expanded its range to include Eurasia.” (Pg. 272)
He recounts, “In 1972… Richard Leakey announced the discovery of a fossil that was to … subject the early history of the homo clade to further scrutiny. That fossil, KNM-ER-1470, was the larger part of a cranium pieced together from hundreds of fragments… The face was large and flat, the palate was blunt and wide, and, judging by their roots, the absent teeth would have been large. These features are reminiscent of australopithecines. Nevertheless, the cranium was large… which betokened Homo. Minimal bone remained in the specimen, which prevented making an unequivocal attachment of the face to the brain case. As a result, uncertainty arose of the appropriate angle of the face: a small angle made the cranium look like Homo, while a larger angle was australopithecine-like. Leakey and his colleagues also debated the proper species’ attribution for the fossil. Leakey favored Homo, for example, while [Alan] Walker preferred Australopithecus. Eventually, the fossil was described in a Nature publication as Homo, with its species undetermined.” (Pg. 287-288)
This was a fine, and well-illustrated textbook.
Science writer Roger Lewin wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “This volume is the evolutionary product of the third edition of ‘Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction,’ through processes of expansion and diversification. The overall structure is based on … its orientation of viewing human evolutionary history in the context of behavioral ecology---but with many chapters substantially enlarged and new ones added, forming an expansion, as well as an update, of the previous edition. The result is a fuller, more comprehensive approach to the study of human prehistory… The past three years have witnessed an extraordinarily rich crop of fossil discoveries… The origin of modern humans remains a lively topic of discussion and disagreement in paleoanthropology… The treatment of modern evolutionary theory is much more extensive in this book compared with its predecessor… Systematics has gained even further importance during the past few years, as anthropologists strive for methods to resolve issues of evolutionary relationship.”
He explains, “If evolution were steadily progressive, forming a program of constant improvement, the transformation of ape to human could be viewed as a series of novel adaptations, each one naturally preparing for and leading to the next. Such a scenario would involve continual progress… going in a particular direction. From our vantage point, where we can view the end-product, it is tempting to view the process in that way because we can actually see that all those steps did actually take place. This slant, however, ignores the fact that evolution tends to work in a rather halting, unpredictable fashion, shifting abruptly from one ‘adaptive plateau’ to another. These adaptive plateaus are species, of course, and each was adaptively successful and persisted for a considerable time .. before a rapid evolutionary shift, perhaps propelled by external forces, yielded a new species with a new adaptation.” (Pg. 15)
He notes, “Debate over human origins has advanced substantially in recent years, particularly in broadening the scientific basis of the discussions… Two principal themes have been recurrent in this century of paleoanthropology, each of which has been seen to be more or less important at different times, depending on the ebb and flow of intellectual tides. First is the relationship between humans and apes; how close, how distant? Second is the ‘humanness’ of our direct ancestors.” (Pg. 19)
He acknowledges, “Unless fossils or artifacts are recovered directly from the sediments in which they were buried soon after they died, not even the most securely dated volcanic tuff can be used to supply a date with certainty. An object lying on the land surface may have come from quite different sedimentary layers. One development that is helping to overcome these problems is the ever-finer physical and chemical analysis of mineral matrix that may be accreting to the fossil or artifact. With this type of assessment, it is sometimes possible to identify the layer that originally contained the object, if the layer still exists at the site.” (Pg. 93)
He admits, “the divergence of the hominoids and cercopithecoids … [is agreed to be] between 31 and 22 millions years ago… but no common ancestor has been identified… Another disagreement has occurred over the identity of the ancestral stock of the living hominoids… The uncertainty partly stems from the fact that the fossil discoveries highlight just how sparse the record really is.” (Pg. 201)
He points out, “Proconsul fossils have been found at several sites in Kenya, and this species is probably the best-known Miocene ape… Interestingly, the hand had a large, opposable thumb, which makes Proconsul more like humans than either monkeys or apes. This feature suggests that Proconsul might have had considerable manipulative skills, perhaps including making and using simple tools, such as stripped twigs.” (Pg. 207)
He states, “No undisputed australopithecine fossil has been found outside the African continent. In fact, most scholars agree that hominines did not leave Africa until approximately 2 million years ago, when Homo Erectus expanded its range to include Eurasia.” (Pg. 272)
He recounts, “In 1972… Richard Leakey announced the discovery of a fossil that was to … subject the early history of the homo clade to further scrutiny. That fossil, KNM-ER-1470, was the larger part of a cranium pieced together from hundreds of fragments… The face was large and flat, the palate was blunt and wide, and, judging by their roots, the absent teeth would have been large. These features are reminiscent of australopithecines. Nevertheless, the cranium was large… which betokened Homo. Minimal bone remained in the specimen, which prevented making an unequivocal attachment of the face to the brain case. As a result, uncertainty arose of the appropriate angle of the face: a small angle made the cranium look like Homo, while a larger angle was australopithecine-like. Leakey and his colleagues also debated the proper species’ attribution for the fossil. Leakey favored Homo, for example, while [Alan] Walker preferred Australopithecus. Eventually, the fossil was described in a Nature publication as Homo, with its species undetermined.” (Pg. 287-288)
This was a fine, and well-illustrated textbook.
November 2, 2022
Good introductory text with a fair amount of depth.
Read
February 16, 2023This book is excellent for study and further reading. Ongoing because it is a textbook for classroom use mostly.
December 19, 2013
This is one of the greatest book and well-written, I've never seen any book like this as I'm really interested in Evolution, Where the author argue, From "Supernatural view of man" Darwinian revolution just lead us into "Naturalistic view of man". At this point I'm truly agree that this is the same thing that happened in the world of astronomy and physics, where a long years ago people believe in "Geocentric universe", but then Copernican Revolution lead us into "Heliocentric universe", The scientific knowledge just takes us into the truth by knowing them from the observation and through repeatedly-experimentation.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews