The Dawn of Human Culture [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

"The Dawn of Human Culture" proposes a theory for the "big bang" in human consciousness, an event that occurred about 50,000 years ago for reasons that are not entirely clear. The archaeological record suggests that humans became physically modern about 120,000 years ago--if you could dress a human from that time in modern clothes, he or she would blend in on the streets of any modern city.

Behavior, however, is a different matter. The authors present a very strong case that whatever it is that makes us fully "human" did not appear until about 50,000 years ago. At about that time, people suddenly started engaging in recognizably modern behaviors--producing stunning cave paintings, carving figurines, making complex ornaments, burying their dead with ritual, building semi-permanent structures, assembling an intricate tool kit, and expanding throughout the world. The authors readily concede that there are a few ambiguous examples of similar behavior among more ancient Neanderthals and archaic homo sapiens, but the change after 50,000 years ago is a flood compared to the trickle that came before it.

To unravel the mystery of this abrupt event, the authors start with the appearance of australopithicenes and other "hominids" that may or may not be ancestral to modern humans. They then carry the tale forward, describing "revolutions" in tool making and other behavior (of which there were very few before 50,000 years ago).

I was impressed by how careful the authors were in laying out their arguments for the lay reader. Each point is clearly made, and the authors give fair treatment to scientists with whom they disagree. They scrupulously note when they have chosen to accept one point of view over another. The result is a meticulous, fair summary of what scientists know about the origins and development of the human species--as well as an intriguing answer to the mystery of how we came to be (no, I'm not going to give away the authors' theory--read the book).

If you enjoy "The Dawn of Human Culture," there are two other books that you might want to read. The first is "Origins Reconsidered," by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin. Although the book is now a bit dated (it was published in 1992, before several significant discoveries in the late 1990s), it is a very well written tale describing the discovery of a lifetime.

The second is "Mapping Human History" --while not in the same scientific league as "The Dawn of Human Culture" or "Origins Reconsidered," this book offers an often interesting story of what our genes tell us about human history.

There are in-depth reviews on this site that do justice to this otherwise excellent book. I would like to focus here on the one singularly troubling aspect (of this book) that has not received much attention in the other reviews.

The book's cover gives the impression that it reveals and expounds on a significant new theory on the genesis of human consciousness. At the least, a glance at the cover will give the impression that this theory is the central thesis of the book.

Much to my surprise and disappointment, however, I had to wait till the last 3-4 pages to discover what this 'bold new theory' was! Klein merely speculates in a few paragraphs that there was a fortuitous genetic mutation, circa 50,000 years ago, that resulted in a significant advance in human brain fuction.

There is no discussion on where this mutation occurred. If Homo Sapiens had already spread out of Africa by this time (as Klein states), how did the mutation effect all of humanity? If this is such a 'bold new theory', why does Klein spend so little space discussing it? Klein admits that no physical evidence for such a hypothesis can be found - the theory is not testable. Nevertheless, this does not let him off the hook for giving his thesis the detailed exposition that it deserves.

Undoubtedly, Richard Klein is one of the greatest anthropologists today. Given that, I am disappointed that he would (ostensibly) resort to a flashy title to increase this book's popularity. Klein's theory may well be actually what happened, but then it surely deserves a more in-depth treatment than what is presented here.

If you want to read a succinct account of human evolution and tool making, this book will satisfy you. There are a few other books, however, that are better in this respect. I was expecting more.....

I still don't know how Richard Klein and Blake Edgar managed to get so much of the story of human evolution into 277 pages. My guess is that Klein owes much to Edgar, who, as a professional science editor, had already co-authored a book with eminent paleoanthropologist, Donald Johansen. The book is just about as technical as the general reader can absorb, while patiently explaining, often repeatedly, why certain developments need to be understood. We get detailed explanations of all current geochronology techniques, along with the limitations of each. We learn how to overlay paleomagnetic dating to test dating processes. We also get a very readable sequence of craniodental morphologies among early hominids, along with explanations of why some of these hominids are, and some are not, our direct ancestors. The thoroughness of the presentation on artifact dating is more typical of academic writing, but Klein and Edgar believe we general readers need it, and they trust us to understand it. You will never be confused again about Oldovan, Acheulean, Mousterian, and Upper Paleolithic cultures, or how they fit into the Early, Middle, and Late Stone Ages. The illustrations are extremely useful, whether dealing with geochronology, hominid remains, artifacts, or migration patterns. Where this book stands above the field is in its treatment of the dispersion of hominids from Africa, intertwined with their anatomy and behavior. Klein and Edgar take particular care that we follow their logic that Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis share a common ancestor with Homo sapiens, likely Homo ergaster, but that they evolved on separate branches, leaving no descendants. For this, the authors rely on genetic analysis of the Y chromosome, correctly presuming that the general reader will not want excessive detail. In the last pages of the last chapter, the authors make good on the claim on the book's cover, to "a bold new theory on what sparked the "Big Bang" of human consciousness." Underlying the claim is the fact, as the authors persuasively document, that anatomically and behaviorally "near-modern" humans can be dated to 120,000 years ago, yet we see no evidence of a blossoming of the self-awareness and of self-expression which defines true modernity until much later. The earliest evidence is the Chauvet Cave paintings of 30,000 years ago. In explanation of this evolutionary lag, the authors offer their theory that "the...most economic explanation for the 'dawn' is that it stemmed from a fortuitous mutation that promoted the fully modern human brain." As the authors hasten to point out, "the strongest objection to the neural hypothesis (as they call it) is that it cannot be tested from fossils." And in the book's last line, they solicit "feedback on just how persuasive our logic is." This degree of diffidence is so uncommon in the community of professional paleoanthropologists that it will likely contribute to the theory's viability. But then, we wonder along with the authors, what alternative explanations to their neural hypothesis are even conceivable?