How humans behaved before they behaved like humans

Henry Gee

  • African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity by Chris Stringer and Robin McKie
    Cape, 267 pp, £18.99, March 1996, ISBN 0 224 03771 4
  • Humans before Humanity by Robert Foley
    Blackwell, 238 pp, £25.00, December 1995, ISBN 0 631 17087 1
  • The Day before Yesterday: Five Million Years of Human History by Colin Tudge
    Cape, 390 pp, £18.99, January 1996, ISBN 0 224 03772 2
  • The Wisdom of Bones: In Search of Human Origins by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman
    Weidenfeld, 270 pp, £18.99, April 1996, ISBN 0 297 81670 5
  • The Neanderthal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins by James Shreeve
    Viking, 369 pp, £20.00, May 1996, ISBN 0 670 86638 5

Humanity is fissile: everywhere it goes, it forms clans, Yoruba and Yanomamo, Mods and Rockers; so powerful is the urge to diverge, even shared ethnicity is optional. No wonder humanity is so hard to define. Taxonomy, designed to resolve such issues, is helpless where it matters most. Every species of animal and plant is uniquely defined as such on the basis of an objective description of its form and habits. All, that is, except one, Homo sapiens. Our entry in the Systema Naturae, devised by Linnaeus, says (more or less) ‘reader, know thyself,’ thus admitting the impossibility of seeing ourselves as others see us.

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