Genealogy Books - The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans

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Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: extinct hominids
Comment: interesting book, written for a lay audience by experts in the field. Vivid reconstructions of some
20 extinct pre-humans, information about where they lived, fossil evidence, etc. Little molecular
evidence.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Brilliant and beautiful
Comment: Brilliant and beautiful, this book may be helpful to those who find human evolution difficult to
understand or accept.

The artwork is spectacular and succeeds at bringing long-extinct
hominids back from the dead.

I highly recommend this book for both casual science fans
and serious students of human evolution.

I recently gave a guest lecture on early
hominids at my children's school and showed the students some of the art from this book in addition
to my own replica skulls. They were blown away. The story of our origins--as described by the
evidence--is fascinating and irresistible to virtually everyone who has a curious mind.
/>--Guy P. Harrison, author of 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

I also
recommend:

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters

Evolution
Boxed Set

Walking With Cavemen

Customer Rating:

Summary: Beautiful Pictorial Guide To Human Evolution For Those Who Aren't Scientists
Comment: "The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans" is a beautiful, illustrated guide
to human evolution that's aimed for a scientifically literate general audience, without much of the
terminology associated with paleoanthropology and other relevant aspects of physical anthropology.
The principal authors, physical anthropologist Gary P. Sawyer and artist Viktor Deak, are the
co-leaders of the Fossil Hominid Reconstruction and Research Team based at the American Museum of
Natural History's Department of Anthropology, which has used the techniques of forensic anthropology
to recreate these vivid illustrations of these extinct hominid species, often relying on the latest
paleoanthropologic research (though, in a couple of instances, the authors observe that some
artistic license was taken with the final appearance of several individuals). This book is
essentially a visual companion to the dioramas and other related displays featured in the recently
opened Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History, in which the
reconstructions made by Sawyer and Deak have taken their rigntful prominent places as among the most
intriguing in this elegant hall devoted to human evolution. If nothing else, both this book and this
new permanent exhibition, demonstrate more convincingly than ever, that human evolution has been an
increasingly "tangled web" of species diversity, of which Homo Sapiens - humanity - is the sole
surviving species. In addition to Sawyer's and Deak's contributions, there is eloquent writing too
from Richard Milner, an anthropologist and writer who is affiliated with both the museum's
anthropology department and Natural History Magazine. The book's text does an admirable job covering
not only the paleontology of each species (e. g. geological and paleobiogeographic range,
palecological reconstruction), but also delves into the probable cultural attributes of each of the
twenty-two hominid species. Without question, this book is artistically - and scientifically - the
latest word on human evolution aimed for a general audience; I strongly commend Yale University
Press for trying to keep its production costs to a minimum to ensure a potentially large audience
for it.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Ultimate Extended Family Photo Album
Comment: "The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans" is a numinous, scientifically
accurate, and artistically inspired depiction of human evolution - the ultimate extended family
photo album and history - that follows the emergence of 22 human species from our primordial cradle
in Africa six to seven million years ago to the dawn of Homo sapiens.

Unlike overly
popularized accounts, "The Last Human" unflinchingly notes that Homo sapiens was not an inevitable
outcome. Environment and contingency generated, and the fossil record documents, a hominid family
tree sprouting many branches including forerunners, relatives, and extinctions. Photorealistic
three-dimensional reconstructions portray hominids such as Australopithecus afarensis, Homo
rhodesiensis, Homo erectus, and Homo neanderthalensis (among others) with startling and emotionally
evocative intensity.

The accompanying text provides a comprehensive account of each
species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology,
lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons
for extinction.

By masterfully merging scientific insight and artistic interpretation
into a coherent and compelling whole "The Last Human" eloquently articulates how family history is
everyone's heritage. This is a category-defining book that deserves to be widely read. It has my
highest recommendation.

Also try Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our
Ancestors by Nicholas Wade, The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors by Ann
Gibbons, From Lucy to Language: Revised, Updated, and Expanded by Donald Johansen, or the
Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins by Carl Zimmer.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A Hominid Family Photo Album
Comment: This book is the work of the artists and scientists of the Fossil Hominid Reconstruction and
Research Team. Sawyer is the physical anthropologist, Deak is the paleoartist, and Sarmiento wrote
the text. They take all that is known about each species within the genera Australopithicus,
Ardipithicus, and Homo, and synthesize that data into stunning, beautiful, and somewhat disturbing
likenesses of individuals. Whether in forecasting the future or in reconstructing the past, the
further you get from the present day, the more uncertainty is introduced. The authors admit to a
blending of science and art, and they admit that the more flimsy the fossil record, the greater
their artistic license. It is said that all of the known fossils of proto-humans would fit in the
bed of a pickup truck, and it is with this implicit caveat in mind that you must evaluate the
accuracy of the reconstructions. Also, only bone fossilizes, and this is a book about soft tissue,
so there is considerable inductive logic implicit in the reconstructions. The result is simply
phenomenal, and we all owe a great deal to Sawyer, Deak, and Sarmiento for their scholarship and
their inspiration. My guess is that any future corrections to their work will likely appear
immaterial to the scientifically literate general reader which is their target audience.
/>The paleoanthropological discoveries in the text of this elegant photo album of proto-humans have
been published before; the reason you will want to read this book is to meet your family in the
flesh, to see what your ancestors looked like. Take each reconstruction as a hypothesis; this is
what they most likely looked like, based on our current interpretation of the fossil record. />
This book's stunning illustrations will be certain to attract a fresh audience of
paleoanthropological novices, and they will find, after their initial shock, that the authors
present a rather comprehensive introductory course in the topic. It is a welcome addition to a
bibliography of recent books aimed at the general reader, including "The Dawn of Human Culture", by
Richard Klein, "From Lucy to Language," by Donald Johansen, "Extinct Humans," by Ian Tattersall and
Jeffrey Schwartz, and "Becoming Human," by Ian Tattersal (see my Amazon reviews). This book doesn't
require a vocabulary in craniodental morphology, and for the most part Sarmiento's text employs
terms in common usage, in preference to scientific terms less familiar to the general reader. />
What emerges from these pages is the slow, but accelerating evolution of proto-humans, by a
process of brutal natural selection, including many failed "branches" in the evolutionary tree, all
but one ultimately leading to extinction, leaving only ourselves.

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