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New books shed light on the ascent of man, but many mysteries remain, says Caspar Henderson
Henry Gee's big beef in The Accidental Species is with a common and popular narrative in which the evolution of man is a steadily unrolling tale of progress. Think of the classic image of a knuckle-dragging, ape-like creature giving way to a hunched, primitive man who in the following frames becomes taller and bolder until finally he looks like a Premier League football player minus the shorts. The truth, Gee argues in this amusing but baggy book, is much more complex and surprising.
Exhibit A is Homo floresiensis, a miniature woman whose fossilised remains were discovered in 2003 on the Indonesian island of Flores. Gee, a senior editor at Nature, sides with those scientists who judge "Flo" to be a direct descendant of the Australopithecus line rather than a shrunken form of a more recent member of our genus. If this view is right then a picture established over several decades in which only much more modern humans left Africa has to be cast aside. The case of Flo, says Gee, is his book in microcosm: "It shows...