Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins

By Carl Zimmer (Collins, 2005, $29.95)

The scientific study of human evolution is perpetually in flux. We continue to adapt and evolve genetically, while researchers almost daily unearth clues that force the rewriting of the fascinating story of how Homo sapiens has triumphed as a species.

Fossils no longer are the sole source of information about humans’ ancient beginnings. Much of the story of our evolutionary journey is inscribed in our DNA.

In Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins, science writer Carl Zimmer offers readers a compelling, accessible and up-to-the-minute guide to the evolutionary history, present and future of our species. From Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species to today’s DNA analysis by robots at the National Human Genome Institute in suburban Maryland, Zimmer re-examines the major steps in human evolution.

Using humor and down-to-Earth anecdotes, Zimmer tackles this complex subject with clarity. In terms anyone can understand, he outlines the differences between us and our close European relatives, the Neanderthals: “Their faces were long, their noses huge,” he writes. “They were stocky and muscular; paleoanthropologists estimate that a Neanderthal weighed 30 percent more than a living human of the same height. Picture an Olympic shot-putter with Cyrano de Bergerac’s nose.”

Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins also examines Homo sapiens’ genetic relationship to chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, and the now-extinct Gigantophitheuc blacki, an enormous Asian ape that stood 10 feet high and weighed 1,200 pounds.

Zimmer spells out how Homo sapiens’ cognitive reasoning sets us apart from other primate branches. He delves into the fascinating theory that all living humans can trace the ancestry of their mitochondrial DNA to a single female. Studies of DNA from people around the world assert that she lived in Africa less than 200,000 years ago.

Zimmer also highlights the stunning 2004 discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores of the bones of tiny hominids that stood only 3 feet tall and had brains the size of our own. These fossils—dubbed Homo floresiensis—are now the subject of one of the fiercest controversies in human evolution. The hominids lived as recently as 18,000 years ago. Some scientists believe they were actually Homo sapiens pygmies. Others contend the small beings are more closely related to Homo erectus. Zimmer’s book outlines the debate in rich detail.

With some 100 color photographs and illustrations, each of the book’s eight chapters is highlighted by a sidebar that explores such topics as “Myth of the Missing Link” and “Genetic Engineering: A New Kind of Evolution?”

Zimmer also reveals how evolution has changed humans in just the last few thousand years. For example, a number of cultures have taken up cattle herding, such as the Maasai of East Africa. As a result, natural selection favored mutations in their genes that allowed them to digest cattle milk.

The guide also looks to the future to imagine how evolution may affect the human race in centuries to come. For instance, humans have been subject to malaria for thousands of years, and the disease’s deadliness has driven the evolution of many adaptations to fight the parasite. Unless the spread of HIV is stopped, Zimmerman concludes, this virus also will probably have an impact on the evolution of our species.

The second in a series of Smithsonian Intimate Guides, this clear and concise overview of the latest discoveries in human evolution will appeal to the general reader and expert alike.