Extinct Humans - Softcover

The introductory history of human taxonomy sets us up for the discussions to follow and reminds us of our tendency to read more into human history than can reasonably be inferred from the evidence. The racist sentiments of 19th-century anthropologists found firm footing in their theories, and we can only wonder what mistakes we're making today. Doing their best to eliminate extraneous details, Tattersall and Schwartz provide a lean, parsimonious theory to guide anthropology into the 21st century, as we try to learn why we're the only ones left. --Rob Lightner

The human family tree has long been invisioned as a straight line progression from bipedal apes to Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Neanderthal to us, Homo sapiens. But this model of a single species at a time is suspiciously unlike the pattern of multiple branchings and extinctions known for other groups of organisms, and it fails to confront adequately the variation evident in the hominid fossil record itself. Eschewing preconceived models of evolution, Tattersall and Schwartz look anew to the morphology of the fossils to see what story they tell. It is a story of great variation, and repeated speciation and extinction, played out over millions of years of hominid history.

One of the recurrent themes of the boook is that related hominid species undoubtedly lived together over time and space, possibly peaceably, but possibly in direct or indirect competition with one another. Since the mid-twentieth century, for example, it has been evident that two species of australopithecines existed at one time in South Africa, one of which, a specialized vegetarian, went extinct without descendants. Early members of our genus, Homo, existed side by side with australopithecines, complicating the picture further. Recent redating of Asian Homo erectus fossils implies that Java man might have been a contemporary of European Neanderthals and even modern humans, casting serious doubt on the longstanding belief that this widespread hominid was our direct ancestor. It is increasingly clear that the Neanderthals were not directly ancestral to modern humans but were in fact a side branch whose extinction was due in large part to competition - whether violent or not - ! with modern humans who invaded Europe 40,000 years ago.

Extinct Humans presents convincing evidence that over 15 different species of human have existed over time, with multiple human species coexisting simultaneously up until only 25,000 years sgo. How did our fellow humans differ from us? Which were direct ancestors to us and which represent ultimate dead branches on our family tree? Perhaps most provocatively, Why are we the lone remaining species?

Extinct Humans contains over 150 illustrations, most of them in full color. Many of the photos were taken by the authors themselves as part of their extensive reexamination of hominid fossils around the world.