An evolutionary odyssey

Abstract

Four and a half million years ago, the first hominids were just another species of African ape competing for new ecological niches. Like all other species before them, the prehumans followed the well-trodden path of biological adaptation. However, in the course of their evolution, humans would differentiate dramatically from any other beings by developing increasingly complex technologies. Culture finally played an overwhelming role in their adaptive success, making them menacing challengers for control of the entire biosphere. Most of the human odyssey is summed up in the following statement: more and more cultural adaptation, less and less biological adaptation, but some, nonetheless. The notion of palaeoanthropology refers to the need to deal with both human palaeontology and palaeolithic archaeology in order to understand the extraordinary singularity of human evolution. This is the scope of The Human Career, but, surprisingly, of very few comparable publications. In its initial version, this book by Richard Klein was intended mainly for students. But after a decade of spectacular progress and controversies in this field, the book’s format and contents have been completely revised, and it has been transformed from a textbook to a sourcebook. Its second edition stands out in the landscape of scientific publishing. The Human Career describes one of the most spectacular changes to have occurred in our understanding of human evolution. The once-popular fresco showing a single file of marching hominids becoming ever more vertical, tall and hairless now appears to be a fiction. Humankind did not simply pass though successive stages, eventually leading Powering the planet