Human Origins—Explorations and Discussions in Anthropology, Biology, Archaeology, and Geology discussion

This is the place to briefly tell us what you're reading that you think others may be interested in. Provide a link to the title if at all possible so others can add it to their shelf if desired. Thanks!

I am currently reading Richard G. Klein's The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins (Third Edition, 2009). Yeah, you look like a total nerd reading this on the train to and from work, but it is some seriously interesting stuff!

Currently reading 'The Social Conquest of Earth' by E.O. Wilson. It charts the genetic and cultural evolution of our species, and makes a compelling case to resurrect group-level selection theory, which theory has been out of favour in the scientific community for over 40 years. It's excellent. A full executive-style summary of the book will is available at newbooksinbrief.wordpress.com

Cheers,
Aaron,
The Book Reporter

Finished Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This knocked House of Leaves off the #2 of my favorite books list. But GEB is not a book you can really finish. I will have to go back and closely look at each passage.

I started The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen's Most Important Koan. Sounds really intriguing. I'd like to start going through the Koans, and MU is a great place to start. Over 1/3 into The Savage Detectives. Interesting Latin American writers references. It's not quite grabbing me yet, but I like literature in which I'm not sure which way it's going. Some books give you a gestalt before you finish the first chapter. I prefer books that won't allow you to do that. And still enjoying Leonardo Da Vinci: The Anatomy of Man: Drawings from the Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, looking at a picture before sleeping, and dreaming of the internal organs of man.

Reading:
Everett - Language: The Cultural Tool
Harris - The Moral Landscape
McGinn - The Character of Mind

finished the better angels of our nature by Steven Pinker. I feel way more optimistic of the future now

I read The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language and How the Mind Works by him. They're both terrific. I'd like to eventually make my way through all of his books.

Just read Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade. Fascinating book about the outmigration(s) from Africa but I'm still trying to understand how really accurate the genetic tracing of ancestor migration is. Anyone know a book that might clarify?

Robert wrote: "finished the better angels of our nature by Steven Pinker. I feel way more optimistic of the future now"
There's been a LOT of criticism of Pinker's book
http://libcom.org/blog/steven-pinker-...
see the discussion and relevant links in that thread

and the most recent and detailed is by Herman & Petersen
http://www.zcommunications.org/realit...

I think I need a little optimism in my life, perhaps I shall read The Better angels of our nature by Steven Pinker.
I am now reading Before the Dawn and understanding how warfare has been part of our genetic make-up for thousands of years and it all seems so set on a course of destruction. The strongest overpower, the greed and force overcome the meek, violelnce overtake, the peaceful, the quiet, meek, sweeet, and gentle. That is our history, our legacy. And this senario seems to be present in our modern world to an accelerated extent. Yea, maybe I will read Better angels next.

I am currently reading THE PREDATATORY TRANSITION FROM APE TO MAN by Raymond A. Dart. I decided to read this after eading AFRICAN GENESIS by Robert Ardrey.

Just finished reading Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?. The book explores our traditional way of life (prior to the onset of civilization) and makes the argument that though civilization does bring it with it many important benefits, there are several areas wherein traditional practices represent an improvement over how we do things in the modern world, and that these practices could (and should) be incorporated into our modern way of life (both at the personal and societal level). The areas include conflict resolution, child care, treatment of the elderly, approaching risk and health. The book is very illuminating. I've written a full executive summary of it available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2013/01/15...

Cheers,
Aaron

I just finished "The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Humans, and the Invention of the Pleistocene." I write Ice Age poetry and teach a group of teenagers to do it too. Now I am reading "How to Write a Good Poem : Three Essential Elements." I have been asked to present a poster on why I do this at a symposium at the Colorado School of Mines. The symposium is on the Ice Age. Now I must come up with an abstract to go with the poster. This is turning out to be hard---mixing poetry and science. The Ice Age is where modern man emerges.

Aaron wrote: "Just finished reading Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?. The book explores our traditional way of life (prior to the onset of civiliz..."

With a fatality rate of 25 % your view that modern societies has much to learn from primitive when it comes to conflict resolution is a bit puzzling.

Best regards,
Pål

Pål wrote: "Aaron wrote: "Just finished reading Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?. The book explores our traditional way of life (prior to the on..."

Hi Pal. It's not so much my view as the argument that Diamond makes in his book--though I was persuaded by it. It's true that traditional societies have a higher % of mortality due to both inter and intra-group violence than modern states (Diamond himself points this out). However, because traditional societies lack a formal justice system to punish offenders, they virtually always try to resolve disputes in a peaceful, conciliatory way. It is this process that Diamond thinks we can learn from.

It is true that sometimes this process breaks down, and a cycle of violence is instigated (so it's really good that we have a modern justice system to prevent this), but the process itself, Diamond argues, holds value, and we could afford to integrate it more in our modern justice system (which we are starting to do by way of such programs as restorative justice).

Cheers,
Aaron

I am currently reading--for the third time--Steven Erikson's amazing fantasy series, "The Malazan Book of the Fallen". It is a ten-volume series of interconnected books that tells the story of an empire (i.e., the Malazans), much like ancient Rome, that is endeavoring to conquer a world of incredibly diverse peoples and cultures. Erikson is an educated professional archaeologist and anthropologist, and his work experience and knowledge are clearly evident in the peoples and cultures he's invented in the series. There are peoples in this series of novels that are spot-on representatives of Neandertals and even earlier Homo erectus, cultures like those of North Africa and the Middle East, and even cultures that are very much like the Native American Plains Indian tribes. Additionally, he has developed a very sophisticated and elegant system of sorcery and magery that really is completely unique to fantasy fiction, in my opinion. Another aspect of this series that I like very much is the strong connection of the plot to the ecology and environment of his world. Anyway, while "The Malazan Book of the Fallen" is not non-fiction, I'm wagering that many of you might find it a hugely fascinating and a riveting series to read.

Now, on the anthropological front, I just ordered three new books to read, including: (1) Missing Links: In Search of Human Origins by John Reader; (2) Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade; and (3) The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors by Ann Gibbons. All three of them are actually focused on telling the history of the search for our human origins--kind of a 'history of anthropology'. I'm very much looking forward to reading them.

Just finished reading the new book by Chip Walter called Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived. The book makes use of the latest fossil finds and DNA analysis to chart the evolution of our species from chimp to the present. It's an excellent account of our evolutionary story. I've written a full executive summary of the book available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2013/02/26...

Cheers,
Aaron

Aaron wrote: "Just finished reading the new book by Chip Walter called Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived. The book makes use of the latest fossil finds and DNA analysis t..."

I just finished reading the review of the book that you've posted to your blog, Aaron, and enjoyed it very much. I need to read Chip's book soon. Thanks for posting this! Cheers!

Christopher wrote: "Aaron wrote: "Just finished reading the new book by Chip Walter called Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived. The book makes use of the latest fossil finds and ..."

Thanks Christopher, I'm glad you liked the article. Chip's book is well worth the read.

Cheers,
Aaron

I am about two-thirds of the way through Stephen Oppenheimer's 2003 book entitled, The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa. This is a truly fascinating book that very successfully melds the paleontological, archaeological, ecological, and genetic data and evidence associated with the dispersal of anatomically modern humans from Africa between 80,000 and 90,000 years ago, and how these early peoples colonized the rest of the planet. This book is very well written and tells a very compelling story. Personally, I think this is one of the more important anthropological books that I've read in years, and should be required reading with anyone with more than a casual interest in the complete story of our human origins. I can't wait to finish this and write my review! I highly recommend this book.

I just finished Oh, Myyy! by George Takei. I was extremely proud of him for explaining the differences between the words "Maya" and "Mayan", then I was saddened when he suggested everyone to read Jared Diamond's book.

I am now reading "The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" by Elaine Morgan. Not sure how much I'll be able to stomach but I try to force myself to read what is being presented to the general public.

Rachel wrote: "I just finished Oh, Myyy! by George Takei. I was extremely proud of him for explaining the differences between the words "Maya" and "Mayan", then I was saddened when he suggested everyone to read J..."

I read Elaine Morgan's book on the aquatic ape hypothesis ("The Descent of Woman") over 30 years ago. Much of the hypothesis doesn't hold water, but there are some interesting bits and pieces. She at least made the point that women have evolved just as men have (which might seem obvious, but certainly was never hinted at in the college courses I took 30+ years ago). So one or two human characters might have evolved because they were adaptive for females of the species. That was a refreshing change of pace back in the '70s.

I am currently rereading Clive Finlayson's excellent book, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived, Oxford University Press, 2009. I read it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, and as I've read a lot on paleoclimates and paleoecology of late, I wanted to go back and revisit Finlayson's book. He spends a lot of time on discussing the importance and causes of the climate conditions in the Pliocene and Pleistocene and the implications on local and regional ecological communities and hominin evolution. I will revise and/or update my review of this book upon finishing my reread.

I'm new to Goodreads and, obviously, to the group. I have been reading broadly on this topic for about five years - probably 60+ books. Some of my recent favorites include Bickerton, "Adam's Tongue," Wrangham, "Catching Fire," Chapais, "Primeval Kinship." I would like to translate this interest into an advanced high school course (senior seminar) on "Human EvolutIon and Social Analysis," and have begun planning a curriculum. I would love help in building the syllabus, including both classics and modern readings. Would this be the right forum? I'd be happy to share my outline and preliminary book list.

Ralph wrote: "I'm new to Goodreads and, obviously, to the group. I have been reading broadly on this topic for about five years - probably 60+ books. Some of my recent favorites include Bickerton, "Adam's Tong..."

Ralph, I'm sure that we'd be delighted to see your proposed curriculum and book list. I envy you the opportunity to share your interest in this subject with your students.

Aaron wrote: "Currently reading 'The Social Conquest of Earth' by E.O. Wilson. It charts the genetic and cultural evolution of our species, and makes a compelling case to resurrect group-level selection theory, ..."
This is an excellent book, in my opinion. E.O Wilson is giant when it comes to all things evolutionary.

Aloha wrote: "Finished Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This knocked House of Leaves off the #2 of my favorite books list. But GEB is not a book you can really finish. I will have to go back and ..."

GEB is a masterpiece of both thought and writing. I love that book and agree you never really finish it. You go back again and again and it morphs depending on where you are at in your life. The sign of a truly great book. Mine is hopelessly dog-eared. The courage it took to write that book could only come from youth :-).

Thanks for the welcome. I'm still new to goodreads, so I'm not quite sure how to use it properly - thus, a bit of a delay since my last post.
As I mentioned, I am working to put together a curriculum for a high school class; I'm also hoping to get good ideas for more pleasure reading. I like a wide variety of books - general evolution and human evolution, evolutionary psychology, history of science (for instance, I would recommend Prindle, "Stephen Jay Gould: The Politics of Evolution," and Gibbons, "The First Human"). I will offer specific comments on some of the books mentioned in later posts.
Broader but related interests include sociology and history (I personally think Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel" is one of the best books employing a evolutionary style approach to human history; "Seeds of Change" by Hobhouse is also good), history of life ("Power, Sex and Suicide" is a fantastic book on the role, operation and evolution of mitochondria), and natural law philosophy (Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Rawls). Two academic volumes that are must reads: Cambridge Companion to Darwin and Cambridge Companion to Origin of Species for anyone in this group.
I am currently reading "The Horse, The Wheel and Language" by David Anthony - also quite dense and academic, covering an interesting subject on the history of the Eurasian steppes from 4th to 2nd Millenium bce where proto Indo-European first emerged.
More on me personally: I am a management consultant for a global firm (I primarily work for the London office, but live in Boston). I did my undergrad and graduate work at Harvard in the 80s, but never took courses from Wilson or Gould (I did take a great course on human evolution from David Pilbeam, though). Aside from the reading above, I enjoy reading about Jewish history and thought, with an emphasis on the biblical period (recent excellent books in this field include Walzer, "In God's Shadow," Hazony, "The Philosophy of the Hebrew Scripture," Nelson, "The Hebrew Republic", and Berman, "Created Equal."). I hope to share ideas and learn from the group.

The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. I've just started reading it and I really like it so far. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68...

Nana wrote: "The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. I've just started reading it and I really like it so far. http://www.goodreads.com/book/sho..."
It's a very good book. The science is getting a little out-dated now, but excellent work. If you enjoy this book, I think you might also enjoy Last Ape Standing. I wrote it, but I'm not pushing it. It's simply that it deals with the same basic theme as Moral Animal. -- How did we get to become the remarkable creatures we are. So you may find it interesting. The New York Times gave it a very favorable review. You can also check out the Goodreads reviews. If you read it, let me know what you think.

Chip wrote: "Nana wrote: "The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology by Robert Wright. I've just started reading it and I really like it so far. http://www.goodreads..."

Thank you for the recommendation.

Just thought I'd suggest this book Beem: Biological Emergence-Based Evolutionary. It offers a hypothesis of an alternative evolutionary mechanism to natural selection.

I've always thought that certain evolutionary instances can't be fully explain by natural selection alone. When I came across this then, I found it pretty interesting. Just a hypothesis and needs some proper academic research to turn it into a bonafide theory, but found it an interesting idea nonetheless.

Aloha wrote: "Finished Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This knocked House of Leaves off the #2 of my favorite books list. But GEB is not a book you can really finish. I will have to go back and ..."

GEB is one of the best and most thought-poking books I've read. I'd classify it as life-altering. A truly unique work, courageous too because it's so thoughtful and so different.

Louis wrote: "Just thought I'd suggest this book Beem: Biological Emergence-Based Evolutionary. It offers a hypothesis of an alternative evolutionary mechanism to natural selection.

I've always thought that ce..."

Can you tell us the premise? What's the operating mechanism? Does the book propose a complete alternative or a complementary system?

Just finished reading the new book by Adam Rutherford called Creation: How Science Is Reinventing Life Itself. The book looks at the latest research in genetics and focuses on 2 topics in particular: the quest to understand how life originated in the first place; and the burgeoning field of synthetic biology (the effort to turn genetic manipulation into an engineering science). The book is well-written and highly informative. I've written a full executive summary available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2013/07/10...

Cheers,
Aaron

Thanks, Aaron! I love your summaries!! And loved the summary you did of my book .

Would you mind contacting me directly by email when you get a chance? I have a question.

Thanks,
Chip

Currently reading Primate Adaptation and Evolution (3rd edition), by John G. Fleagle. Abundantly illustrated and generous in relating environmental circumstance and adaptive response, this book certainly brings a richer level of -- well, humor --- to the human experience.

Two new books:

The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution

The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story

I'll report back once finished, but they are both looking really excellent. I have a strong affection for Henry Gee's writing and humor, so I'll crack that one first.

Much enjoyed Gee's book, which is a frontal assault on human exceptionalism. I'm now reading The Story of the Human Body, by Daniel E. Lieberman, who offers some interesting proposals on the human adaptive symdrome and certain widespread pathologic health conditions in modern society.

Hello. I'm new to Goodreads and this group, and would like to say first how much I'm enjoying this discussion. Incredibly helpful. So here's why I joined the group. After leaving my job in international journalism a couple of years ago, I began studying human evolution, first through art and now through human evolutionary genetics. By the way, I live in France, and am studying at the National Museum of Natural History, where such undertakings are very unstructured -- and in French! So what I'm looking for is some guidance about books in English that cover the movement of early humans not just out of Africa, but more specifically across Africa, from east to west. Even more specifically, is there anything out there about the earliest populations of Mali and its surrounding area? What I've read to date, and this is very basic, is a smattering of books including Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution & Future of the Human Animal, Christine Kenneally's The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, and a few more generic works in French about early humans. I would be very grateful for advice about how to proceed.

I have recently become interested in the field of biosemiotics, which involves the origins of symbolic behavior and what if anything essentially separates human sign relations from those of other sentient organisms. Along those lines, I highly recommend Jesper Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs and Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. They completely changed the way I conceptualized the discipline of biology, and as I am a student of both evolutionary biology and anthropological archaeology their works are important in bridging the gap between the two fields.

Also, David Lewis Williams' The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art is always a classic.

Hi Lucy,

Thanks for those recommendations. I will check them out.

On the overlap of evolution and semiotics, you might be interested in a book I published last year, Paleopoetics (Columbia University Press). In it, among many other things, I take exception to Terrence Deacon's semiotics in The Symbolic Species, his assumption that iconic preceded indexical signs. I think that, as Merlin Donald has argued, humans became human by being superior imitators–that's how we learn–and that copying successful behaviors as well as successful artifacts is based on the capacity to transmit and receive iconic signs, for example, gestures.

Deacon is, or was when he wrote that book, very opposed to gestural theories of language evolution. I do think Deacon is right, though, to draw semiotics into evolutionary discussions. These distinctions are at the heart of animal, including human, communication.

While researching my novel Gravettian Goddess (now published on Amazon Kindle), I read and became completely enamored of Prehistory by Colin Renfrew, The Case for God by Karen Armstrong, and The Mind in the Cave, by David Lewis-Williams

Also, David Lewis Williams' The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art is always a classic.

+1

Do you think it would be possible to organize a monthly book to read and discuss?

Just started reading "Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers" by Mary Roach last night.
Since I'm considering the body farm for grad school I thought this would be a fun interesting read and so far it has been.

I just finished Blood of the Isles: Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History by Bryan Sykes and I've got The Seven Daughters Of Eve on my Kindle. I use a lot of audiobooks and Seven Daughters does not even allow me text to speach so, I'll have to wait for more time to read it (coming this weekend, I hope).

It's generally basic but understandable.