The wisdom of the bones1996
in search of human origins
by Walker, Alan
A remarkable discovery was made a decade ago on a dig in northern Kenya. When all the bone and skull fragments were painstakingly pieced together, they revealed the nearly complete skeleton of a teenage male (nicknamed Nariokotome boy, after a nearby sand river). Faced with the best-ever specimen of Homo erectus - a species long identified as the proverbial missing link between apes and humans - paleoanthropologist Alan Walker embarked on a long-term investigation of that species's nature.
In this book, telling the story of that inquiry, he introduces us to his ever surprising, deeply engrossing world.
Walker examines even the tiniest of bones and the subtlest of clues in his analysis. He first recounts the story of the more-than-century-long search for the "missing link," a bizarre and...