DeSalle’s and Tattersall’s Human Origins: A Companion to The Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Human Origins and More

Abstract

This book was written to complement the recently reworked Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The authors also wanted it to stand alone as an introduction to the latest discoveries in human evolution by presenting new developments and information on paleontology and genomics in understanding human evolution. In so doing the authors attempt to answer philosophical or epistimological questions about how anthropology and evolutionary biology proceed in order to best answer questions about human evolution. How do we know what we know? Why do we want to understand our evolutionary past? How do we establish the validity of our answers? What tools are needed for understanding paleontological, genomic, and evolutionary processes? The authors do an excellent job of answering these questions. In fact, the book easily could be used as an introductory text for a college course in biological anthropology or human evolution. It is up to date, clearly and engagingly written, and well illustrated. The book is around 200 pages and is divided into nine chapters and an epilogue. In Chapter 1, DeSalle and Tattersall give a broad introduction and history of the question of human origins. In Chapters 2–4, they outline the tools used in paleontology, genomics, and evolutionary biology to discover and examine the evidence. The authors put humans in their place in history in Chapter 5 and, in the sixth chapter, they examine human evolution. Chapter 7 contains a description of the genomics of modern human variation and the history of early modern human migrations over the earth. In Chapters 8 and 9, the two characteristics that make modern humans unique among the animal kingdom, the human brain and language are discussed. The epilogue is a philosophical look at where we might be going in the future. In the first chapter, DeSalle and Tattersall explore how humans have approached the questions of their origins both through historical times and cross-culturally. In doing so, they clarify which approaches to the question of human origins are scientific and which are not and introduce what they consider to be the three components of the toolbox of human origins: paleoanthropology, genomics, and evolutionary process. In comparing various creation myths and theories of human origins, the authors ask how can we know what is true? They explain that we never know whether we have the best possible explanation for a phenomenon but that what good science tries to do is to find the best possible explanation given current evidence and technology. Scientists attempt to disprove and to continuously test theories by natural observation. “Through knowing what does not exist or what is not real (and those things or statements that are falsified), we are able to describe the natural world more accurately” (p. 20). This is why religious creation myths and intelligent design are not science—they are unfalsifiable. They cannot be tested and must be accepted as faith. This is fine, the authors stress, but it is not science. DeSalle and Tattersall end the first chapter with a discussion of how understanding human origins and evolution and evolutionary principles are a necessity in solving such modern world problems as Evo Edu Outreach (2009) 2:144–147 DOI 10.1007/s12052-008-0102-3