After decades of slowly piecing together the puzzle of our human origins, the last ten years have seen a gigantic leap forward in our knowledge, spurred by advances in aDNA (see CA 338), radiocarbon dating, and other areas of archaeological science. This new book by Tom Higham draws all of these recent discoveries together into a comprehensive, yet engaging account of how we came to be human and of the close relatives we lost along the way.
As the Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (ORAU), Tom has been at the forefront of some of the biggest of these advances – leading the way in compound-specific dating (see CA 336), which has allowed for more precision in radiocarbon-dating particularly old organic samples, and helping to revolutionise the timeline for Denisovans and Neanderthals. His experience and love of the topic shine through, drawing readers in with his excitement about specific discoveries and technological advances.
Over the course of the book, Tom transports us back into the distant past, first to our earliest origins in Africa. Some previous narratives of our route ‘out of Africa’ have been problematic, over-simplified for the public to the point that they have been used to help reinforce stereotypes of a simple linear progression from the ‘primitive’ to the ‘evolved’. In this book, though, the complexities of the ‘out of Africa’ models (as there were at least two separate diaspora events) are highlighted, demonstrating that evolution is not a one-way street, but instead a complex maze of tree branches. This section, as well as subsequent chapters, also does a brilliant job of emphasising that human evolution is a story of all of our hominin ancestors, because to understand Homo sapiens’ success as a species we also have to understand why the many other branches flourished and then died out.
Greater London: Excavating the CA archive