Origins Reconsidered

by LEAKEY, RICHARD E.LEWIN, ROGER

• ISBN13: 9780385467926
• ISBN10: 0385467923
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1993-10-01
• Publisher: Anchor

Summary

Richard Leakey's personal account of his fossil hunting and landmark discoveries at Lake Turkana, his reassessment of human prehistory based on new evidence and analytic techniques, and his profound pondering of how we became "human" and what being "human" really means.

Author Biography

Richard Leakey is the world’s most famous living paleoanthropologist. He resigned from his position as chairman of the National Museums of Kenya when Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi appointed him to head the Kenya Wildlife Service. His parents were the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. His half-brother is the leading plant scientist, Colin Leakey. 

Roger Lewin, PhD, is a biochemist, the former deputy editor of the British magazine New Scientist, and the author of Making Waves: Irving Dardik and His Superwave Principle, as well as many other highly praised books on biology such as Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos and Patterns in Evolution: The New Molecular View.

Table of Contents

Prologue	xiii
Part One: In Search of the Turkana Boy
To West Turkana	3	(23)
A Giant Lake	26	(15)
The Turkana Boy	41	(26)
Part Two: In Search of Beginnings
Of Myths and Molecules	67	(14)
Upright Apes and Family Relations	81	(16)
The Human Bush	97	(24)
The Black Skull	121	(16)
Part Three: In Search of Humanity
Human Origins	137	(16)
This Way Lies Humanity	153	(20)
A Pendulum Swings Too Far	173	(14)
The Human Milieu	187	(16)
Part Four: In Search of Modern Humans
The Mystery of Modern Humans	203	(15)
Mitochondrial Eve and Human Violence	218	(21)
Part Five: In Search of the Modern Human Mind
The Loom of Language	239	(13)
Evidence of Mind	252	(26)
Murder in a Zoo	278	(17)
Consciousness: Mirror on the Mind	295	(17)
Windows on Other Worlds	312	(27)
Part Six: In Search of the Future
Origins Reconsidered	339	(22)
Index	361