The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

by Ann Gibbons

In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the “missing link”–the fossil of the earliest human ancestor–Gibbons ventures to Africa, where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil Tim White, the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia; French paleontologist Michel Brunet, who uncovers a skull in Chad that could date the beginnings of humankind to seven million years ago; and two other groups–one led by zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by British geologist Martin Pickford and his French paleontologist partner, Brigitte Senut–who enter the race with landmark discoveries of their own. Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Evolution, Africa, Biology

326 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2006

Reviews

[Greta G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michel Brunet and Toumaï


“This is not about science! This is about theater!”

The First Human is an excellent read. It tells the story of the scientific pursuits and rivalries of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and finding the 'missing links' between humans and apes.

There's Tim White and his team, the Middle Awash Research Group (Ethiopia), Michel Brunet and his team, Mission Paléoanthropologique Franco-Tchadienne (Chad), Richard and Meave Leakey and the 'Hominid Gang' (Tanzania, Kenya), and Martin Pickford and his partner Brigitte Senut (Kenya).

The book transports readers into the lives of these and many other scientists and describes their work, their discoveries and the intense challenges of fossil hunting in Africa.

This book is all about the competition between fossil-hunting scientists to find an important new link in the human evolution story.
But don't be mistaken, this isn't an Indiana Jones-like story.
Although the story specifically focuses on this competition, and on the strives and rivalries between these ambitious scientists, it also provides the reader with insight in the science involved with finding, handling and interpreting fossils.

Ann Gibbons is an authoritative journalist for "Science", specialized in the field, and her knowledge of the material is solid. But she writes in a manner that is not too hard to understand for the reader.
Given the dry material, this fascinating and enlightening account of the highly competitive and specialized field of paleoanthropology is a great accomplishment.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in this topic but don't know where to start, or if you want to have a look behind the scenes of this world of fossil hunting and scientists.

It's the kind of book that inspires me and makes me enthusiastic about life.

9/10







Sifting fossils from dirt is tedious, difficult work. See if you can spot the tiny rodent fossil near the tip of this finger.



Keeping it together — unearthed delicately after millions of years, this fossil is treated with preservative to harden and protect it.



Turkana warriors near Kanapoi, Kenya.



The dig — in Ethiopia at the Aramis site (Middle Awash). It’s desert now, but 4.4 million years ago, this was a woodland habitat.



Prospecting the vast Middle Awash for hominid remains one square meter at a time.



Wrapping a find for transport.


Reviews of The First Human

"An engrossing, fast-paced read, her story unfolds in many remote and rugged locales, from the Middle Awash of Ethiopia to the Tugen Hills of Kenya and the Djurab Desert of Chad. Gibbons tells of hard-driven, dedicated teams contending with extreme heat, blowing sand, illness and other hazards of fieldwork in Africa, where success demands years, or decades, of persistence." — Scientific American


One of the top five books. "Ann is the correspondent for Science magazine who covers this field, so she is extremely knowledgeable and very much up to date. ... she covered not only our work but the work of many other people. So this gives the reader the most up-to-date knowledge of how modern paleoanthropology is done. And it gives you a sense of the personalities involved and the breadth of science...." — Paleoanthropologist Tim White, interviewed for The Browser web site, October 2011


"From the outside, the science of paleoanthropology often looks like a swamp of ego, paranoia, possessiveness, and intellectual mercantilism. This view describes no more than the visible tip of a very large and profoundly fascinating iceberg; but there is more of a grain of truth in it nonetheless, as Ann Gibbons shows in an absorbing tale of discovery dominated by a handful of difficult and quirky characters worthy of a Gothic novel. If you want some insight into the human story behind current takes on the saga of our remotest origins, start here." — Ian Tattersall, author of Becoming Human


"The past decade has seen a series of astonishing discoveries about our distant ancestors, but it has not seen a book that does justice to them until now. The First Human is a marvelous narrative of science and scientists, simultaneously exciting and authoritative. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand where we come from and how we know it." — Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh and Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins


"Gibbons deftly weaves together the research and the human story. She conveys a very real--and uniquely objective--sense of the infighting that plagues paleoanthropology. Indeed, her account of these rivalries is likely to elicit squirms of regret among her sources for exposing the discipline's dark side. While the science alone is compelling enough to carry the book, Gibbons rightly notes in her acknowledgements that it would be impossible to separate the personal politics from the research results. "The science lurches forward," she observes, "despite the foibles of the individual scientists." — Archeology


"With great flair (and a real gift for explaining a somewhat dusty science), Ann Gibbons recounts a recent tale of four research teams in The First Human — each with its share of gigantic brains, egos, and competitive drive — locked in a thrilling race to establish nothing less than the dawn of humankind — Entertainment Weekly


Science’s evolution reporter traces the search for, and fractious debates over, the origins of humankind, from 1868 to 2005. Gibbons propels her narrative with the frenetic pacing of a thriller, full of ruthless competition, jumped claims, armed guards and one rescinded apology. It all climaxes with a debate in Paris at which Tim White declared: “This is not about science! This is about theater!” — Seed


"... Gibbons explains what paleoanthropologists have been doing over the past 15 years: competing, feuding, and making dramatic discoveries. Anchoring her narrative to the anatomy that is the foundation of physical anthropology, Gibbons intentionally emphasizes the personalities involved. Leakeyesque fame is one unspoken prize in field research on human origins, and several scientists acknowledge here their youthful inspiration by Louis and Mary Leakey's careers. One was Don Johanson, celebrated for the "Lucy" fossil discovered in 1974 that reigned temporarily as the oldest human ancestor. From the state of scientific affairs at that time, Gibbons' narrative drives forward the hunt since 1990 for a hominid ancestral to Lucy. Amid the particulars of newly excavated fossils, which include a spectacular skull from Chad that provisionally is the oldest human progenitor at six or seven million years old, Gibbons pointedly dramatizes the field's territorial attitudes toward fossils. Science in the flesh is ever popular, and Gibbons' successful debut marks her as a writer to watch." — Booklist

"Gibbons has been a commentator on human evolution research at Science magazine for over a decade. In that role, she has had unique access to the personalities and career fortunes of those intriguing hominids, the paleoanthropologists.... Through her interviews and reporting on scientific developments, Gibbons gives all parties an airing of their various interpretations of events and evidence. The captivating result is a near insider's account that still has the critical distance a nonpartisan can offer. Strongly recommended for public and university libraries." — Library Journal

"A deft account — part detective story, part adventure tale — of recent breakthroughs in the search for human origins. 
Gibbons, Science magazine's primary reporter on evolution, frames her narrative around four prominent research teams responsible for discovering the oldest known examples of early humans (it is believed that African apes came down from the trees and began to walk some five to eight million years ago).... Gibbons provides inspiring portraits of genius laced with the nitty-gritty of mortal foible, all informed by firsthand accounts, interviews and research. While acknowledging a 2004 Gallup poll demonstrating that 45 percent of Americans believe "God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago," Gibbons provides for everyone else an evocative examination of what we know about where, when and why our species arose--indeed, what first made us human.
Expert science reportage larded with an unexpected dose of intrigue." — Kirkus Reviews




The author at Kanapoi, Kenya

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As The Hominid Turns

"My intent was to show the triumphs of the science of paleoanthropology and Darwinian evolution in the past century, despite personal battles and intense rivalries, false starts and mistakes. The science lurches forward despite the foibles of the individual scientists." ~Ann Gibbons

2006 - A glorious scientific soap opera. In a study of the tribalism of the people who study tribalism, Ann Gibbons lays out the paleoanthropologic hierarchy, along with all its trappings, for the whole world to see. This is about 60% solid science and about 40% backbiting, career-threatening drama that culminates in an all-out WWF cage-match in Paris between Michael Brunet (representing Sahelanthropus tchadensis), Brigitte Senut (representing Orrorin tugenensis), and Tim White (representing Ardipithecus ramidus).

5 stars

"...some researchers urged me to stick to the science and to avoid writing about the politics and personal rivalries... I found it impossible, however, to separate the human story of the quest from the scientific results; science is a social endeavor and the personal politics influence not only who gets access to data, in the form of fossils and fossil sites, but even how researchers interpret the fossils and formulate hypotheses." ~A.G.

[Iset · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I mistakenly bought this book thinking it’d be an intensive look at the discoveries and hottest issues in palaeoanthropology today, but when I dug into it I quickly realised that this is only one third of the book. The other parts of the book comprise the history of the field in the 20th century, how it has progressed and how paradigms have shifted – I admit I find all that stuff rather dull, though I am rather familiar with it, having spent a year of study on paradigms as a post-graduate. To be honest that’s never been my thing – I prefer digging into the history and archaeology directly, rather than the torturous tangle that is paradigm debate. Why the aversion? Well, other than the sheer dryness of paradigms, that world often comes along with professional rivalries and even enmities. It’s those biographies and rivalries that make up the final third of the book, detailing the astonishing viciousness between rival causes in the field. Like I said, I prefer to just steer well clear. But as regards to the book, I most enjoyed the overview of the discoveries, and although I may find the paradigms dry and the rivalries distasteful, looking at how the history of the field has changed and how professional rivalries have affected it is important for understanding how and why the field operates as it does today. Self-examination and critique has often been, and continues to be, an obsession of our field, and a vital part of rigorous scientific process.

P.S. Please don’t ask me to weigh in on the Ardipithecus, Orrorin, Sahelanthropus debates. My area of work is mainly after prehistory.

7 out of 10

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-researched expose on the politics of paleoanthropology, and includes a little bit about paleoanthropology. 30 years ago I sat in the lecture hall and listened to Tim White tell caustic stories about Richard Leaky and others in the field. He had a deep resentment of what he called “goodie hunters” and hated the “Indiana Jones” depiction of archeology. This book explores those relationships and uncovers the backbiting, if not all-out combat, among researchers seeking the fossil evidence of the earliest humans. Having studied under others persons featured in the book, like Vince Sarich and Sherwood Washburn, I have a personal interest in the story, and a longing to go back and do it again, but this time enter the fray. But that aside, I think this is a good read for anyone.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gibbons writes a real detective story--the search for the earliest ancestors of humans. She focuses on four international teams of scientists and their intense competition.
Starting with the Leakeys, thanks to them we know human origins begin in Africa, home of two great ape species, the chimpanzee and gorilla.It was in 1974 that Donald Johansen discovered "Lucy," in Ethiopia, pushing human origins back to 3.1 million years ago.
What's amazing to me are all the discoveries made in the 90s and continuing into the 21st C. Very gradually, we are piecing together a picture of what our earliest ancestors were like.

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that explores the first human ancestors and the search to learn more about them. It was very interesting and extremely intruging. Loving the subject normally, Ann Gibbons did not disappoint in her informative yet very easy to listen to. I will definitely be on the look out for other books by her!

[Vaishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The exceedingly cut-throat level of competition in Eastern African anthropology is a long-standing problem." - 1982 memo to Vice President George H. Bush

Never thought there'd be a complete tell-all on the back-stabbing, politicking world of paleoarcheology... but here it is. A very well-researched read with gorgeous desert imagery, though it totally destroys my view of legends like Louis Leakey. Fascinating data, but what jerks :)


Interesting Quotes :
-----------------

"The underdog Frenchman would beat the better financed and better known American. 'I am working in older sediments. I will win.' "

"Temperatures can get so hot that plastic drink containers left in the shade of cars and tents - there is no other shade - can spontaneously explode."

"They were careful not to touch anything metal, in case it was one of the mines left by the northern rebels - deadly reminders of civil war."

"For 20 years, textbooks put Lucy's species as the ancestor of all humankind... by the mid 1990's when Brunet began scouting for sites in Chad, there were unmistakeable clues that this view was too simplistic."

"... Where was the ever older ape that was the last ancestor humans shared with chimpanzees before they parted company...?"

"In some years, windstorms had buried their tents, trapping them inside for several days, where they survived on pasta and tuna... But the wind was also their ally... exposing fossils that had been buried for millions of years."

"(Tim White) once published a list of recommendations to paleoanthropology students that became known as the Tim Commandments and included such rules as 'If your career goal is to make a fortune, then go to medical school, become a knee surgeon, and practice on suburban soccer players.' "

"He is even careful about how he poses for photos with his Ethiopian colleagues, so that he does not appear to be in charge."

"... Team members crawled across a shallow gully, with gloves on their hands and pads on their knees, positioned shoulder to shoulder so they would not miss a fragment in the rubble."

"An early photo of Maeve and Richard in National Geographic in 1970 - the year they were both married - showed them ... tall, bronzed, and good-looking, as if they had been cast for the parts, and were having the time of their lives."

"Unlike Maeve and many of these young scientists, Richard was self-trained and had no academic degree..."

"... Richard had been nearly killed in a plane crash. His road to recovery had been a difficult one, involving the amputation of both of his legs..."

"They saw so many fragmentary fossils of ancient animals strewn across the hills and gullies of Kanapoi... as if they found the ruins of an ancient Greek temple."

"Louis (Leakey) welcomed him by sending him on a detour, steering him to three different places where fossil beds proved a real disappointment."

"Leakey felt entitled to reserve the most promising areas for finding fossil hominids for himself - or for his chosen associates... He is best known as the mentor to the three ape ladies... Jane Goodall... Dian Fossey... Birute Galdikas."

"The unspoken rule was if they found hominid or fossil apes, they were to call in the Leakeys."

"Patterson also had a reputation for getting lost... he was notorious for 'being lethal when left unsupervised in charge of machinery'. "

"By the 1960s so many fossils of Miocene apes had been discovered that it was clear the earth truly was the planet of the apes... They flourished during a time when the Tethys Sea, which had long separated Africa and Eurasia, was retreating and creating a giant land mass thick with rain forests. Gangs of apes moved between the continents, traveling along thickly forested corridors from Spain to China. But the golden age of apes came to an end when almost all of these apes became extinct... as the climate cooled and got drier."

"The mystery of the Miocene was 'Which one of these fossil apes was the one that survived to produce humankind?' "

"... The chicken's immune system could not tell the difference between albumin from a human, a gorilla, or a chimpanzee - and fought them with equal vigor. But it did not recognize the blood proteins from orangutans or gibbon apes as invaders, which meant they were less like the human blood protein... Chimpanzees and gorillas were more closely related to humans than were orangutans and gibbons."

"... The sun sets fast near the equator, because its path is perpendicular to the horizon."

"... Researchers... including Tim White... had uncovered an ethereal trail of footprints in volcanic ash that dated to 3.6 million years..."

"Johanson had kept Lucy locked in a wall cabinet in his office in Cleveland for 5 years."

"... Gorillas are so similar to the two living species of chimpanzees... that they are often described as scaled-up chimpanzees."

"... Savannah hypothesis... assumed that all the key phases of human evolution took place in the open grasslands of Africa.... But new studies would soon find that the earliest australopithecines still favored well-wooded areas near the shores of lakes and rivers."

"No sooner had White wished out loud for a femur and a skull than the Middle Awash group delivered. It was uncanny."

"... For every hominid fossil found in Omo, for example, paleontologists would find 10,000 fossils of extinct animals, a ratio that underscored how vanishingly scarce human ancestors were on the landscape 3 million years ago. Their populations had obviously been small... but as rare as hominids were there was not a single fossil of a chimpanzee or a gorilla in eastern Africa."

"... Chimpanzees and gorillas lived in the large forests of tropical Africa but not in the more open terrain of the Great Rift Valley of the East."

"... 8 million to 10 million years ago in the tropical forests that covered equatorial Africa ... was the home range of the common ancestor of humans and the chimpanzees until the movement of tectonic plates... remodeled the landscape and created the Great Rift Valley which bisects East Africa... The climate changed, with land on the western side of the rift remaining wet and humid, while the land to the east became hot and dry... The chimpanzees stayed in the forests west of the rift zone.... This compelling model would explain simply and clearly why chimpanzees and humans were so close genetically but why the fossils of their ancestors were never found in the same terrain."

"It also had become clear to Brunet and Heintz that they would not find hominids in Afghanistan because the fossils of mammals discovered were not the type usually associated with early hominids."

"When they arrived back in camp, many were angry that Kitonga had a gun."

"...Every single team vying for access to fossil sites had friends and in some cases lawyers in high places in the governments..."

"Do not try to revise history to give yourself an advantage, or make yourself look smarter, or better than other workers..." - from the "Tim" Commandments

"Sometimes they walked as much as 20 or 30 miles following goat or camel trails through ancient lake beds and over prehistoric lava flows... They were so far off the beaten path that more than once they surprised Afar villagers and found themselves looking down the wrong end of a gun barrel."

"White would comment later on Haile Selassie's uncanny ability to find fossils of hominids describing it as a talent... that is innate... 'It is this anatomical recognition skill that is absolutely essential in the field , because the fossils that you find aren't nice intact skulls... They're usually broken in very small pieces that are hard to identify, and you literally find hundreds of thousands of such pieces every day.' "

"... Pickford would say later that he felt 'sorry for people who studied only human evolution. It's like picking up a book and skipping to the last chapter to read the ending...' "

"National Geographic had offered him a lucrative contract as an explorer in residence in exchange for exclusive rights to his story and future research findings. Brunet declined the offer, noting that 'Americans want to buy everything.' "

"The fossil record is exclusively African for almost 5 million years since no hominids older than 1.8 million years have been detected outside of Africa."

"... There is little overlap in the skeletal parts to compare. Brunet has a skull, but no one else does, excluding White's unpublished crushed skull... Pickford and Senut have a thigh bone... but it is not connected to a toe bone, which is what Haile Salassie has... while Maeve Leakey and Alan Walker have a shin bone and a wrist bone..."

"The real Garden of Eden it turns out looked a lot more like the Okavango Delta than the wide open spaces of the modern Great Rift Valley."

"Some mammals were migrating between Europe, Asia, and Africa, presumably moving over a land bridge that connected what is now Yemen to Ethiopia 5.6 million years ago. Indeed one of the questions being hotly debated is whether an ape that was the ancestor of African apes and humans was ambling along with the animals on those migrations from Europe and Asia, or did the ancestor of African apes and humans arise in Africa?"

"... When ancient animals migrated between Libya and Chad, some little two-legged ancestors might have been among the followers that moved along wooded corridors linking the two regions. The nomadic French paleontologist confided this to Libyan president Muhamar Qadafi on an official French expedition to Libya recently. Brunet left Qadafi's tent with a name of a guide and permission to explore southern Libya."



.

[Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the surest ways to turn me against a work of non-fiction is by misrepresenting its content to me. When I started to listen to 'The First Human', it was because I wanted to learn about the current state of paleoantropology and state of our knowledge about the 'ancient' humanoids. This book seemed to fill the bill. Well... In my opinion, only about a third of the book is dedicated to the topic that was of interest to me. Furthermore, a good part of 'relevant' information was presented in oblique manner as arguments in what this book is really dedicated to - a tiresomly detailed recount of a variety of conflicts between leading names in this particular field of science.

So here's the thing - a blow by blow narrative of battles between paleoantropology experts may be of interest to people who either work in this field or have for this or that reason a stake in this particular soap opera. And those people probably already know about all that stuff already! This book is however, to my best understanding, intended for general public as a popular scientific presentation of developments in and current state of paleoantropology. If my assumption is correct, then I'm sorry to say that the author completely missed the mark with this book.

On the other hand, 'The First Human' seems to be a perfect illustration of realities of participation in modern academic world and the strifes and conflicts that occur in it all too frequently. Often petty or rudiculous to an outsider, more often than not based solely on clashes of big egos, these conflicts frequently create very real road-blocks in advancement of our knowledge and development. This book seems to illustrate this phenomenon perfectly. What's more, based on what Ann Gibbons reveals in her book, it seems that field of paleoantrophology suffers from this problem in the extreme. If I were an undergraduate student thinking about a career in this field and I've read this book, I would seriously consider switching to a different field. Perhaps that's where the real value of 'The First Human' really lies, as a warning to potential newcomers in the field of paleoantropology.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ann Gibbons has written a very solid and fascinating account of the relative recent discoveries of several of our earliest human ancestors. Gibbons is a well known science writer and brings significant journalistic integrity to her story-telling, as well as significant knowledge of her subject matter. The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors (2006) is the story of the paleoanthropologists behind the incredibly important discoveries of hominin species that are currently some of the oldest yet found, and span a range of ages from 5.0 million years old to perhaps as much as 7.0 million years old.

Gibbons, in telling the story of these discoveries, necessarily focuses much of the book on the out-sized personalities (and, dare I say, egos) of the anthropologists leading the teams exploring various important fossil regions in Africa. The teams she primarily focuses on in the book include Tim White and his work in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia; Richard and Meave Leakey in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya; Martin Pickford and Brigitte Senut in the Tugen Hills of Kenya; and Michel Brunet and his team in the Djureb Desert of Chad. Each of these teams of highly professional specialists in their respective fields have significantly added to our general understanding and knowledge base associated with the very earliest hominin species found to date, including Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, and two newly identified species, Orrorin tugenensis and Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

Gibbons is quite even-handed in describing the tension and academic conflict that has arisen among some of these researchers associated with the interpretation and meaning of these important fossil discoveries and their role in understanding and explaining human evolution. Gibbons does a great job of not editorializing or letting her own emotions color the scenes she writes about, and simply factually recounts the stories of the fossil discoveries, the research science that followed, and the resultant back-and-forth academic squabbles that erupted as articles were published and discussed in various academic journals. As a serious amateur student of paleoanthropology and human evolution, I know that this is pretty much de rigueur, not only in anthropological circles, but among the scientific community as a whole. All in all, I think that a rigorous and scholarly debate is incredibly healthy and typically results in the advancement of scientific knowledge. Having said that though, and based upon my interpretation of what Gibbons presents in this book, it is my personal opinion that Martin Pickford--one of the co-discoverers of O. tugenensis--behaved simply deplorably in his much of his dealings with his peers in the academic community over many, many years.

If you're interested in reading about how scientists gear up and conduct scientific expeditions in some very inhospitable portions of the world in their on-going search for the proverbial "needle in the haystack", then I think you'll very much enjoy Ms. Gibbons, The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors. Additionally, if you're specifically interested in learning more about these new, and incredibly ancient, species that have been discovered (i.e., O. tugenensis and S. tchadensis you'll very much appreciate the detail and solid science that Ms. Gibbons provides in telling this fascinating story.

[Charles Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

According to a Gallup poll taken in 2004, 45 percent of Americans believe that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago." More than 50 years after the Scopes trial, and 135 years after Darwin published "The Descent of Man," lots of people still find it hard to believe in human evolution.

But though the fuss over "intelligent design" and other anti-evolutionary arguments has made a lot of headlines lately, it barely surfaces in Ann Gibbons' colorful and readable book about the search for human origins. In "The First Human," Gibbons, who reports on human evolution for Science magazine, gives a lucid account of the science involved in finding fossils, establishing how old they are, and ascertaining whether they in fact belong to the ancestors of humankind. She also shows how difficult and sometimes dangerous the work of hunting for 7 million-year-old fossils can be. And that, like most humans, anthropologists are subject to such emotions as ambition and jealousy, especially when they're Indiana Jonesing for the next big find.

Not even the most charismatic anthropologist swashbuckles like Harrison Ford, but some of them do have touches of glamour. "With his complex character and dark humor he could have sprung from a Hemingway novel," Gibbons says of Tim White, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1993 White and his team were flown from San Francisco to Ethiopia in billionaire Gordon Getty's private jet, because Getty's wife, Ann, was studying anthropology at UC-Berkeley and was a field worker in the expedition.

But White is also a no-nonsense type who likes to demonstrate the harsh reality of fossil-hunting for lecture audiences. He tells them that to re-create the conditions in the Afar rift of Ethiopia, he would have to heat the auditorium to 100 degrees, "blow in dust and sand, and bring in two dump trucks filled with scorpions, snakes, and malarial mosquitoes." In the course of his research, White has contracted malaria, Gibbons reports, as well as giardia, dysentery, hepatitis and pneumonia.

White is not the only fossil-hunter who has suffered. Richard Leakey lost both legs when he crashed his plane in Kenya, and field workers have been killed by bandits and warring tribes. Teams are often threatened by the volatile politics of post-colonial Africa, where virtually all field research into human ancestry is conducted. One researcher was expelled from Ethiopia because of suspicions that he was working for the CIA. During the political turmoil of the 1980s, all fossil research in Ethiopia was halted by the country's government for eight years.

And sometimes competing research teams are a threat to one another. Leakey virtually sewed up paleontology research in Kenya by cutting a deal with the government, and rival researcher Martin Pickford was arrested when he tried to make an end run around that arrangement. But Pickford could be equally protective of what he considered to be his turf. He once charged a Yale University team with raiding and corrupting a fossil site he laid claim to. When a Yale researcher returned to the site, she was met by a man who challenged the validity of her permits and added to the intimidation by flashing a gun tucked into his waistband.

These tensions and turf wars arise because the rewards for discoveries – foundation grants, academic tenure, awards, prizes and public acclaim – have escalated since Donald Johanson's celebrated discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, a 3.1 million-year-old hominid popularly known as "Lucy," in 1974. Lucy's reign as the oldest known human ancestor lasted for nearly 20 years. Then in 1992 a team including White and Japanese paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa discovered Ardipithecus ramidus, which has been dated at 4.4 million years old, and a string of other discoveries followed over the next decade. The latest of them, by Michel Brunet in Chad in 2002, potentially pushes back known human ancestry to 6 or 7 million years ago.

Nothing that old is in good shape, of course. We're not talking about complete skeletons but about teeth, the occasional jawbone or skull or thighbone, sometimes on the verge of crumbling into chalky dust. But in every case there's just enough to convince researchers, and their peers that review their research, that a hominid, and not an ancestor of an ape, has been found. But usually there's also little enough to provoke ongoing controversy.

Which is why the layperson asks, as a journalist did at a symposium that brought together some of the eminent discoverers: "Why do you scientists always argue about your fossils? Why don't you share the fossils?" Gibbons points out that one reason is that the fossils don't belong to the researchers, they're "the priceless property of the nations where they were found." But she also explains that consensus would be hard to reach even if the hominid scraps were gathered in one place. "Together, the fossils collected in the 1990s and early 2000s would cover a large desk and would represent a few dozen individuals at least," she notes. But too many pieces are still missing from the puzzle – including fossils of the ancestors of our closest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas – to allow for a clear picture of the evolutionary lineage.

So in the end, "The First Human" is a bit like a detective story without a conclusion, or like a detective story that puts Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Sam Spade, V.I. Warshawski, Easy Rawlins and Gil Grissom all in the same room, gives them a handful of clues, and lets them argue endlessly about the solution. The characters in Gibbons' book are almost as colorful and cantankerous as those fictional sleuths. Science writing is rarely this entertaining.

[Susan Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paleoanthropologists began searching in earnest for early ancestors - looking desperately for the ancestor that was qualified as 'hominid', especially since the discovery of 'Lucy' by Louis Leakey and his wife. The discoveries keep shifting further back in time and the searchers are squabbling over search areas and analysis. There have been new discoveries of ways to date fossils, although many are based on the fossils of known animals that are now extinct and found in the same strata and areas as the fossil being dated and a knowledge of when those animals flourished. There are also technicalities fo argon-argon dating (I don't remember exactly). Very little has been found of those fossils - mostly teeth and some jaws, the occasional skeleton and very rarely arm or leg bones. There is still no sure proof of when apes and humans diverged or even if hominids came from any of the found fossil lines. There is not enough evidence to draw a family tree.
But there sure is a lot of squabbling and in-fighting and jealousy. And the searchers each want to have found the oldest possible hominid fossil, even though they don't entirely agree on the proof. Very interesting tale of the trials and troubles of paleoanthropologists and paleontologists and geologists, who are all involved in the search, dating of fossils, and research. There is serious and time-consuming search and effort put in to all of this, which adds to our knowledge of the ancient past - but no conclusive findings as yet. Still, it's all quite interesting.

[Peter Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read on the history of human evolution, even delving into the politics of paleo-anthropology.

Credit was given to both international and local experts in the field, usually with a solid history on their accomplishments and lives in general.


Very informative, great pacing!

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information, although, I'd prefer more on the findings and less on the squabbles.

[Fernando Barriga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro cuenta la historia de los orígenes y la evolución humana al abordar uno de sus aspectos: la búsqueda del ser humano más antiguo, aquel ser que, hace"mucho tiempo", decidió no ser un chimpancé.
El libro se lee a muy buen ritmo y su bibliografía es excelente. Las líneas de tiempo de los hallazgos fósiles y de la evolución humana son muy buenas adiciones, al igual que las breves biografías de los personajes principales que se han involucrado en esta búsqueda.
Se trata de un libro imprescindible para cualquier persona interesada en los orígenes humanos, la historia y la paleontología humana.

[AJ Payne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook.

Jun found this book for me at the library, and it should have been great - one of the topics I love!

But, it just didn't really keep my interest. Perhaps because it was just far enough away from one of my favorite topics that it couldn't keep me listening very closely. It was much more about the paleontologists/anthropologists that search for fossils, and all their infighting/squabbling/claim jumping and a lot less about the history of human evolution. I should have guessed that by the title, but I guess I wasn't expecting it quite so much.

So, since I'm not one who gives much of a hoot about the people who find the fossils, other than a passing interest that could be explained in a page or two, this book just wasn't for me. The parts that dealt with human evolution, and the implications of each major discovery were fine - but were separated by enough paleo drama that it was hard to get through.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with the writing, the person who read the book constantly mispronounced African words - and not even hard ones! A select list of mispronounced words: Zaire, Malawi, matatu, Jomo Kenyatta, sahel. It just disappointed me that the reader obviously took the time to learn how to pronounce all the French scientists names, all the latin/greek/etc genus and species names for the hominids, and yet couldn't be bothered to pronounce even African country names properly. Ugh. Just a personal pet peeve of people knowing next to nothing about Africa :)

Anyway, if you like paleo drama and learning about the personalities of some of the major hominid fossil hunters this book is for you. If not... then not so much.

[Carol Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Equal parts fun-with-fossils and paleontological cat fighting, and it's a winning combination.

Try as we might, the human element can never be fully removed from scientific endeavors and paleontology has the full panoply - competition, rivalry, backstabbing, subterfuge, public attacks, politics, politics, and more politics.

But that's not cause for despair. The author says it best in her acknowledgements:

I found it impossible, however,to "separate the human story of the quest from the scientific results; science is a social endeavor and the personal politics influence not only who gets access to data, in the form of fossils and fossil sites, but even how researchers interpret the fossils and formulate hypotheses. In the end, I decided to include personal details where they influenced the science or revealed the motivations of the scientists. My intent was to show the triumphs of the science of paleoanthropology and Darwinian evolution in the past century, despite personal battles and intense rivalries, false starts and mistakes. The science lurches forward despite the foibles of the individual scientists.

Enjoyed this more than Chris Stringer's Lone Survivor. Better writing, better organized, more entertaining and equally informative. But they each adopt a different focus (Stringer emphasizes the "Big Questions" in the field right now), and both are worth reading.

[Nola Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely not a beach read. It's a compelling tale of the search for human origins, and the author does an excellent job of bringing it together in narrative form. There are a lot of names to keep up with, which can get confusing, especially when you also have to balance the politics. Still, despite it being outside my field, I think the author did a good job of taking what could have been a list of discoveries and molding it into a story. That said, while I get that it is ongoing, the conclusion felt a bit abrupt.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this overview of the current thinking in hominid/hominim evolution, and the personalities that have driven the field over the last half century of so.
This book is very well written, though not for the faint-hearted as the detail at times needs a second read of some sections to fully assimilate.
Recommended for those who want a deeper undertsnading than can be gleaned from a magazine article.

[Johanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am a diehard completionist and even I had to abandon the book 60 percent through. Not so much about discovering fossils as it is about indistinguishable old white men fighting over sites and fossils like little girls--and taking credit for "discoveries" made by their African "fossil hunters."

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved learning about the drama of discovering hominid bones. The contention between schools of thought and specific scientists was surprising, but why should I have been surprised? The notoriety attached to discovering new fossils is alluring. I am amazed with Michel Brunet and his team.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent journalistic account. Both engaging as a human story and informative enough to be a reference book on the shelves of the paleoanthro nerds among us.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really fun. Who could have suspected the politics at play in the race to find the earliest hominid?

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT ACCOUNT OF THE SEARCH FOR HOMINIDS, UP TO 2006

Ann Gibbons is a writer on human evolution for Science magazine; she wrote in the Introduction to this 2006 about a 1994 discovery, "the renowned Hominid Gang fossil hunter Kamoya Kimeu found two parts of a shinbone that resembled those of Lucy's species, showing that this chimp-sized creature had walked upright... These body parts from several individuals showed a mixture of primitive traits, such as those found in a chimpanzee, and more derived characters---new traits that appeared later in early humans but not in the African apes. The new fossils also showed some unique features of their own. The mix suggested that Meave and the Hominid Gang had assembled fossils of a new type of early human---an upright-walking hominid that was more primitive than Lucy." (Pg. 19)

She notes of an earlier discovery of Louis and Mary Leakey, "The discoveries also offered a new view of human evolution, showing that the earliest sign of becoming human was not a big brain... The big brain did not come until later, less than 2 million years ago, when it began to expand in Homo Erectus, reaching its largest size in Neanderthals and modern humans." (Pg. 43)

She points out that "it was high time for Ramapithecus to come down from the human family tree. More than a decade would pass before many paleoanthropologists --- would admit that Ramapithecus was no hominid. Even then, it would take the paleoanthropologists closest to the fossils to finish off Ramapithecus as a hominid---on the basis of its anatomy." (Pg. 76)

She observes, "Then along came Lucy and other members of her species, walking upright with tiny brains---and well before stone tool kits show up in the fossil record, at about 2.5 million years. The thoroughly upright gait of Lucy suggested a host of new questions: How long did it take Lucy's ancestors to develop a modern gait? Did upright walking appear rapidly in one population? Or did it take many, many generations to remodel the anatomy of hominids before they walked like a modern human? [Donald] Johanson was among those who recognized that it was time to consider new hypotheses about why human ancestors got up on their hind legs and started walking in the first place." (Pg. 96-97)

After new discoveries by Tim White and his team, "Some paleoanthropologists were beginning to wonder if they were seeing fossils that were part of a radiation, or a proliferation of different types of early hominids that walked upright in different ways---and if more than one had been alive at the same time 4 million years ago. This talk of a 'bushy' family tree would drive White up a tree; he would point out that two species older than 4 million years was hardly a radiation... Nonetheless, consensus about the neat line of descent from A. ramidus down to Lucy and eventually to modern humans was beginning to erode." (Pg. 152)

She quotes an article written by Tim White, which concluded, "the science of paleoanthropology at the millennium is in serious trouble. The paleoanthropology commons are at risk from the selfish activities of practitioners. Tenure-tracked, mediaphile paleoanthropologists seem unlikely to rescue the discipline from tragedy. They simply have too much to gain by acting individually and institutionally, rather than for the common good." (Pg. 186-187)

This is a well-written and very engaging tale of the search for our hominid ancestors, that will interest anyone studying the subject.

[Carson Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

At this point, I've read quite a few books on fossil hunters and evolution. Fossil Men, Neanderthal Man, The World Before Us, Kindred, A short History of Humanity, Lucy, etc. This work stands out as being the least interesting of the bunch.

In researching this book before reading it, I came across a reviewer that lambasted it for being mostly about the stories of the hunters, theories over time, and political infighting. They gave it a miserable score, proclaiming that they thought it would be about evolution. As someone who actually read the subtitle of the book, I have to wonder about this reviewer's reading comprehension, and was immediately excited by what they described.

I've read about the likes of Tim White, Svante Pablo, and Don Johanson from their own mouths and was very excited to hear an overview that could give more details, more perspectives, and solidify everything in my mind.

I was grossly disappointed. We all know someone who can keep us enthralled over the most mundane details...and likewise I'm sure we all know someone who could make breaking news about invading aliens sound boring. Well sadly, Gibbons falls into the latter camp.

During the first 1/3 of the book, she retold stories I've heard several times before, but managed to leave out the most interesting parts or to restructure them in a way that robbed them of any human connection or drama.

I thought that maybe I was being too harsh, so I read on to more stories that I was unfamiliar with...only to find them confusing and uninteresting as well. Ultimately I abandoned the book at the 60% mark.

I reserve two stars for books that I think you should actively avoid, and I give that to this book because there are a host of better books that are more engaging while being equally informative. Fossil Men, Neanderthal Man, and Lucy all come to mind. Oh, also, the narrator was insufferable.

Now, I will say that in the 60% that I read, there were a couple cool things that I got clarity on, so I want to briefly mention them here for the ole memory banks.

- White's protectiveness: I left Fossil Men really viewing White as deeply protective of his fossils, but this clarifies that he was willing to show Ardi to people who had old fossils they needed to compare, such as Mary Leaky who brought a 4 million year old fossil to compare to see if it was the same species
- Taung Child: Many of the stories say that the skull on the mantle was the child itself, but this convincingly clarifies that it was a baboon skull. Also, she adds an interesting detail that there was a competition in the class to bring in bones, since professor Dart was dismayed by the lack of a good reference collection at the university.
- Mary's Discoveries: I already had this feeling, but it was interesting to be reminded of how much she discovered, not her husband. Pro Consol, Zinj, etc
- Immunological Trees: You take animal albumen and then inject it into chickens to get an immune response. Then you can take those immune cells and see how well they bind to a variety of proteins to measure relatedness and build trees. Goodman did this work in the 50s? and it was the first time we had evidence that we were more closely related to african vs asian apes

[Nathan Casebolt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I imagine an Indiana Jones movie patterned after real life would be a twelve-hour reel of Indie walking at a crouch through a gully under a broiling sun, staring at the dirt while sweat drips from his nose, until at the end, right before the credits, he bends forward, picks up an arrowhead, and shouts, “I got one!”

Hunting for the past is not glamorous. It’s tough work, often in rough conditions and unstable regions. Paleoanthropology, then, attracts strong personalities with the force of will to endure not only all that field work requires, but also academic politics, bureaucratic mazes, and journalistic spin.

This is the story of these strong personalities, and Gibbons aptly charts the collaborations and conflicts attending the hunt for hominid fossils. She’s careful and balanced, which is important given that many of those whose triumphs and defeats she chronicles are still active in their field.

I enjoyed this and learned a lot from it, mainly that I don’t think I’d make a good paleoanthropologist. I like competition, but I’m not sure I’d be committed enough to generate the 1982 memo that landed on the desk of Vice President George H. W. Bush: “The exceedingly cut-throat level of competition in Eastern African anthropology is a long-standing problem.”

[Tex-49 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saggio-romanzo sulla ricerca degli antenati dell'uomo: gli uomini che hanno perlustrato i siti geologici di Etipia, Kenia e Ciad per ritrovare le traccie sempre più antiche del primo progenitore dell'uomo, non condiviso con le scimmie antropomorfe; i loro sforzi, i loro contrasti nella competizione ad andare sempre più in là nel passato, le collaborazioni e gli intrighi.
Il libro è molto interessante perché fa vivere in prima persona gli avvenimenti e, ad eccezione di alcuni passi troppo dettagliati e pieni di nomi, si legge bene ed avvince; l'unica pecca è la mancanza di immagini dei reperti dei vari ominidi, per avere una visione diretta delle similitudini e delle differenze che il saggio spiega, ma non illustra, il che rende un po' difficile, a volte, aver chiara la descrizione.

[Lisa Houlihan]

The author writes that as knowledge evolved, the term "missing link" no longer worked as a metaphor. It "fell into despair." Also Livingstone AND STANLEY did not search for the source of the Nile. That was Livingstone, and Stanley searched for him. I assume the author is a journalist, a scientist, maybe a paleontologist, not a linguist or an historian of outsiders in C19 Africa, but sheesh, does she not have an editor?

[Ryan O'B · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as dense science goes, this is pretty palatable. It's more of a historical review of paleoanthropology as it relates to the various discoveries of our hominid (depending on whose evidence you believe) ancestors and the various personalities of the scientists themselves. Interesting and probably a good introduction as required reading for anthropology majors.

[David Tee · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a book to help you refute evolution, this is it. That conclusion was an unintentional aspect on the part of the author but as I went through it I found page after page where she undermines the evolutionary argument and makes a better case for the falseness of that theory than she does for its historical accuracy.

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, concise book illustrating the for and against arguments for who gets the title as first bipedal hominin. Can be a bit confusing at times if you're not already familiar with some of the species, but definitely worth your time.