Lowly origin : where, when, and why our ancestors first stood up /

Naturalist-artist Kingdon (Oxford Univ.) is well known for his books on African mammals and his beautiful illustrations of them. This popular science work surveys the past eight million years of human history, with an ecological focus. Beginning with reviews of evolution and human anatomy, early primates, and early apes, Kingdon, surveying Africa of about eight million years ago, suggests that "ground apes" of this time may have foraged for food in a squatting posture, making the most of ape-like long arms and short legs but beginning to change in a human direction. By combining current studies of climate fluctuations with ideas that there were several contemporaneous species or even lineages of early humans over millions of years, he proposes that different major branches of our evolutionary tree evolved in different regions of Africa, partly isolated by geological processes. Later chapters follow the presumed diversity of human varieties (not accepted by all researchers) up to the African origin of modern people who spread out to replace their Neanderthal "cousins." The book is well written and charmingly illustrated (both from a rather personal viewpoint), and although scholars might question the generalizations (while gaining new ideas to ponder), that is what makes science palatable to general readers. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. E. Delson CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College