Children of the Ice Age: How a Global Catastrophe Allowed Humans to Evolve

by Steven M. Stanley

A richly informed and inspired description of our evolution from Australopithecus to the Homo Sapiens we are today.

Genres: Science, Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, Prehistory, Evolution, Palaeontology

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had read Children of the Ice Age 12 years ago when it was first published it probably would have garnered four stars. In 2008, many of the topics Steven Stanley takes up are now accepted wisdom, such as the idea that hominids arose out of australopithecine populations isolated from their native forests in east Africa by drastic climatic change. Or that the hominid lineage is more a bush than a tree, with a host of branchings and not enough fossil evidence in most cases to make more than an educated guess as to the relationships among them.

Stanley is also (at least when he wrote the book) a strong advocate of Eldredge and Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium (briefly: Evolution occurs in relatively brief spurts of intense change brought on by isolation or drastic environmental changes; species equilibrium is punctuated by evolutionary change). I gather from my reading that the theory is not universally accepted; certainly not as the sole mechanism of evolutionary change. As we are discovering, the mechanisms that direct evolution are myriad and, at the moment, unfathomably complex (but knowable - take that "intelligent" design!).

That said, this is still a well written, comprehensive account of human evolution whose ideas may no longer be "cutting edge" but have become the new standard (it's not as if you're reading an anthro textbook from 1920...). Namely:

1. The large hominid brain is the product of an abrupt geological transition that radically altered the landscape of east Africa.

2. The hominid genus is the result of a fortuitous (for us) environmental catastrophe (the Ice Age).

3. That climate change can be traced to a specific geological event (the rise of the Panama isthmus and subsequent alteration of ocean currents in Stanley's view.

4. The human species is a result of evolutionary compromises to accommodate an enormous brain and rapid neonatal development, among other problems unique to our species.

There are a couple of sections where I actually did learn something new. Stanley has a good explanation about brain evolution - why it happened and how the brain developed, and he brings up a theme that I had nevered encountered before: "The big brain of Homo came into being not because such an organ became useful for the first time but because its evolution became possible for the first time." (p. 143f.) He also has one of the clearest & most comprehensive explanation of the various hominid species that we've discovered. (p. 188f.) Finally, he posits that the emergence of Panama (which cut off the Atlantic from the Pacific and altered ocean currents) brought on the current cycle of ice ages and, ultimately, engendered humans. (p. 180f.)

Of course, Stanley can't address the wealth of new information that's developed over the last decade (particularly in relations to genetics and language) but I would still recommend it to anyone who's newly interested in the subject, and, as I discovered, even those well versed might learn something new or be asked to look at old data in a new way - never a bad thing for a book to achieve.

[Jake Leech · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Stanley's presenting a pretty interesting idea here, but at this point he's a victim of his own success--this is no longer a giant bombshell. Additionally, Stanley's got a problem that I see in a lot of science books like this; he's got a 50-page idea and a book deal. That means we see a lot of tangents about stuff like hyena behavior in a chapter which probably should have just said "Australopithecines aren't very good at resisting predators and probably got eaten a lot. Exhibit A, all of these Australopithecus bones with tooth marks on them in a cave."

Overall, this should have probably been a three-star book. OK writing, interesting idea, padded a bit. But I took a star off for the first chapter, and a bit of the final chapter, which came across as being very self-aggrandizing. I mean, credit where credit is due, but the way Stanley tells it, all of science was totally befuddled about human evolution until he happened to hear about the problem one day and figure it all out in fifteen minutes. Maybe that's exactly what happened, but it gave the whole book an air of smugness which I didn't like.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only serious complaint with the book is the prevalence of Stanley saying that lack of fossil evidence a million years+ ago doesn't negate his theories and then turning around and dismissing Neanderthals for having no fossil evidence of culture. You can't have it both ways, sir.

Also I could have done without the moralizing in the last 10 pages, I read the book to learn about ancient human species, not to read about the author's fears of science.

Other than that it's well written and reasonably easy for even the lay person to read. He does get a little dry and tedious in places, but overall it's interesting. I should note that I am not certain if he has removed Homo Habilis from the human line or not, that section was a bit muddy.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Children of the Ice Age, Steven M. Stanley, 1996, 278 pages, ISBN 0716731983

mya = million years ago

19-2.54 mya Isthmus of Panama closes Central American Seaway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isthmus... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central... , https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-...

6 mya Strait of Gibraltar closes, Mediterranean dries. Nile scoured a grand canyon, later to silt full. Miocene ends. p. 54.

5.5 mya sea level rises; Atlantic refills Mediterranean. Pliocene begins. p. 55.

3.9 mya Australopithecus walks on two legs. pp. 39-41. But still climbs trees. pp. 41-51.

3.9-3 mya Australopithecus afarensis lived in Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia. pp. 39-35.

3.5-2.4 mya Australopithecus africanus lived in southern Africa. pp. 30-35, 44.

2.6-2.5 mya Quaternary glaciation begins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Ce...

2.4 mya large brain: develops after birth. Infants helpless, can't cling to mother. Mother must carry infant, so can't climb trees. p. 13.

1 mya homo has harnessed fire. pp. 81, 113.

120,000 ya spotted hyenas in Britain. p. 66.


ERRATA

"Oxygen-18 has 2 more protons than oxygen-16." No, it has 2 more neutrons. p. 95.

[Helen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Paleoanthropology, human evolution not according to Darwin and cartoonists picturing ape, straightening and gradually becoming a human, but a bushy evolution tree, filled with casualties of environmental changes and adaptations play. Main discoveries of the human predecessors (dead branches) were reviewed one by one with explanations what went wrong and how it could be different if the situation was different.

It provides a lot of information, but this is an exceptionally boring book by style. Thorough description of what lead to the author's discovery, with constant comparisons with obsolete and incorrect theories, colorful descriptions and long lines of thought.

It may be just a different mind set. It was OK by content (3 stars on scale from bad to very good), but I don't like it at all.

[Jamey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eat good argumentation like the Cookie Monster eats those cookies of which he's so fond. Yumm...

[Jhawn]

Interesting