Origin Africa: A Natural History

by Jonathan Kingdon

A richly illustrated journey through the evolution of Africa’s extraordinary natural world across deep time

Origin Africa is a unique introduction to the natural history and evolution of the most misrepresented continent on Earth. Celebrated evolutionary biologist and artist Jonathan Kingdon, a leading expert on the natural history of Africa, tells this extraordinary story as no one else can. Featuring a wealth of photographs and illustrations, the book is both a visual and narrative feast.

Africa is the richest continent, containing every habitat from desert to tropical forest and the widest range of plants and animals found anywhere. It has experienced extraordinary climate fluctuations, meteor bombardment, and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions. Yet life has not only survived but evolved almost countless species. One group of primates evolved out of this crucible and moved out of Africa to dominate every continent on Earth. Africa has properties that ensure that most of human evolution couldn’t have occurred anywhere else.

A fascinating story told as never before, Origin Africa chronicles how the natural conditions of Africa enabled a spectacular evolution of plants and animals, including Homo sapiens.

Genres: History, Nature, Nonfiction, Africa, Science, Biography, Audiobook

479 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 25, 2023

About the author

Jonathan Kingdon is a zoologist, science author, and artist; a research associate at the University of Oxford. He focuses on taxonomic illustration and evolution of the mammals of Africa. He is a contributor to The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing.

Reviews

[João · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Origin Africa, Jonathan Kingdon takes us on a whirlwind safari through time, unraveling the tangled, dusty threads of Africa’s evolutionary canvas. Part natural history, part personal memoir, this book is a love letter to the mother land that cradled our species into existence, but also to Kingdon's own mother—who features heavily in the book. Kingdon’s knack for blending keen observation with evocative storytelling shines as he traces the lineage of ancient lungfish, lumbering elephants, and the elusive early hominins who first found their footing on eastern African coastal forests. It's a scholarly exploration wrapped in the crackling, visceral energy of someone who’s spent decades sketching landscapes, and chasing antelopes—an ode to the primal pulse of Africa that shaped us all. A must-read for anyone who feels the thrum of deep time in their bones and wants to get their hands dirty in the origins of our evolutionary tale.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author is perhaps most well known for his beautifully illustrated field guides to African mammals, on which he is an expert authority. Kingdon's expertise however, extends to almost every aspect of African natural history, having grown up and spent most of his life uncovering the diversity and splendor of that continent's flora and fauna and coming up with many of his own theories about its biogeographical peculiarities. The man is nothing short of a walking living encyclopedia on the region's animal inhabitants, and happens also to be a gifted artist, no doubt a talent inherited from his mother, as one would discover from this book.

This most recent of his work, though containing his trademark illustrations and fascinating insights about African fauna, was an overly long and randomly disorganized ramble, meandering from autobiography and memoir of his childhood to detailed observations about the adaptive radiation of monkeys and birds, and then a major section on his musings regarding the origin of hominids, etc etc. It was all a little overbearing and very self indulgent, as I suppose can be expected of a man his age who has accumulated a long lifetime of extensive knowledge on myriad subjects. It did not make for a pleasurable nor smooth reading unfortunately.

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an academic book on how Africa is the birthplace of man and many other animals. While it is an academic book, I found it to be quite exciting for a number of reasons. Like the author, I was raised in Tanganyika/Tanzania but about a generation after him. Many of his examples are from Tanzania or East Africa and so I could easily visualize them. Second, he is a very lively author as he intermingles childhood experiences, discussions with scientists and his excitement about different scientific topics into his writing. While academic, the book includes few footnotes. He wrote it during Covid and worked at bringing together many ideas into a very readable book. Finally, Kingdon is both an artist and scientist. His art, which he shared prolifically in the book, really brings out the scientific ideas he is highlighting in his text. Kingdon brings art, lively writing, and scientific ideas all very well in this book.

[Susan Levenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the most beautiful book I’ve ever seen. Kingdon is an artist as well as a brilliant scientist, and he scatters his drawings, paintings, sculptures, and stained-glass images, as well as artwork by his mother, Dorothy, liberally throughout the text. He was born in what is now Tanzania as a native speaker of both Swahili and English, and the book is both a charming autobiography and a splendid history of the last several million years of his native continent, from geography to evolution. The text often gets technical and can be dense, but I found it worthwhile to make it all the way to the end. I might also mention that Tim Flannery wrote a beautiful review of Origin Africa in the New York Review of Books, which can likely be accessed only by subscribers.

[Dickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, monumental book on natural history, tectonics, evolution, and the processes that have shaped our world, and doom them for future humanity. Let's hope our successors learn from our errors.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unreadable-both physically and stylistically. The print is not quite black and the paper is already yellowing. This makes for very difficult reading. This is complicated by the meandering sentences. I constantly had to reread paragraphs to make any sense of the words.