Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.56 (566 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0684801922 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 639 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-09-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Balanced I have read a number of the popular press books on early Homo sapiens discoveries. This is a comprehensive, balanced review of the Leakey family members life's work and discoveries, thankfully leaving out most of the non-constructive tension with others in the anthropology community.. "Somewhat tedious being bogged down in paleontology controversies but ultimately absorbing" according to Margaret D. Harrill. Somewhat tedious being bogged down in paleontology controversies but ultimately absorbing stories of the lives & scientific contributions of the Leakey family.. A real page turner! A Customer This is a long, engrossing, detailed book about the Leakey family and their impact on paleoanthropology in Africa. It's a real pot-boiler of a book--hard to put down and a totally fascinating study of the family. You get a real sense of their human failings as well as their triumphs. The family comes across as stubborn, intense, egomaniacal and prickly
It also exposes the rivals and jealousies within the family and in relation to other scientists.. The biography explores the Leakeys many significant finds, as they exposed our ancestry and articulated our relationship to the other primates, especially the early hominids. The Leakeys have dominated their science. Not only did each of them make key fossil discoveries, but Louis (who argued that man did not originate on the Eurasian continent tens of thousands of years ago, but was more likely to have evolved in Africa millions of years ago) helped to establish the theoretical groundwork for the science of paleonanthropology. This is a biography of the first family of anthropology - Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey, whose discoveries have laid the foundations for much of our knowledge about the origins of man
. There is a pleasing irony that a single family--the Leakeys--has been one of the most important and effective forces in the age-old effort to trace the human family to its origins. Virginia Morell's book is a fascinating and authoritative personal and scientific biography of the real family (comprised of Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey), their scientific progeny, and (again in a fitting touch of irony), the competing bands of modern anthropologists competing over limited paleontological and conceptual resources of publication, prestige, and power, much like ancient hominid bands competing for caves, copulations, and carcasses. Highly Recommended