Customer Reviews

African Exodus: The Origins of Modern Humanity

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I pondered purchasing this book for quite a long time based on some of the negative views written on this page about this book. After reading several other books on this topic I took the plunge. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found some of the reviews about the book to be simplistic or myopic in thought. I ponder how many of the bad reviews were written by paleontologists who disagree with C. Stringer. Being a meteorologist, I found nothing offensive. I strongly agreed with his concept of hard scientific data and quantifying numbers to prove points.

No doubt, this book was written with latter evidence, including the DNA evidence that allows more specific conclusions. I found the lineage and concepts in line with those put forward by Tattersal and others suggesting no real bombshells in this book.

The book reads very well and is generally well written. The book portrays what most up-to-date books on this topic cover in a concise and consistent manner. The treatment of Neanderthals is good and in no way is negative. It is tragic that they did not survive much beyond about 30 kyrs ago. Anyone interested in current thinking on human evolutions should read this book. Finally, the title of this book is well taken; we are all Africans based on our evolution. Too bad we all don't realize who and what we all are!

I picked up this book simply because I wanted to learn about the origins of mankind. The authors provide ample and well-sustained evidence for their points. The book is fairly recent and thus has the advantage of hindsight, new knowledge and modern research techniques, such as DNA tests, which the authors use to support their argument.

This is not to say that it is perfectly logical. I found the book's low point to be the authors' reasoning for the higher prevalence of Rh-negative blood among very old Western European groups (such as the Basques), which somehow they explain away by those groups' relative isolation from new agricultural societies with higher counts of Rh-positive blood coming in from the East. Also, I didn't care to take sides in an intellectual (and personal) argument with other scientists who don't share the Out of Africa theory, which seems a hidden objective of this book. As for "African Exodus" being a response to "The Bell Curve", I didn't quite get the authors' punch line. This last point, however, didn't bother me at all since The Bell Curve is so obviously discredited by itself.

Read this book if you want to be informed, period.

This book should be read in conjunction with my own Race, Evolution, and Behavior so that all the missing pieces of the puzzle can be seen. The parts of the book that review human origins are competent and very readable. Unfortunately, major errors appear in the book when it descends to the politically obligatory trashing of both The Bell Curve and my own work. In my case, instead of taking the time to read, cite, and critique my 1995 book intelligently, the authors rely mainly on a 1994 account of it in the tabloid magazine Rolling Stone! The basic political argument of African Exodus is as follows: "In any case, the story of our African Exodus makes it unlikely that there are significant structural or functional differences between the brains of the world's various peoples" (p. 181). The logic here is especially odd given that other parts of the book present a fascinating discussion of how populations vary in jaw size and in number of teeth. For example, page 215 states: "Among Europeans, for example, it has been found that up to 15 percent of people have at least two wisdom teeth missing...while in east Asia, the figure can be as much as 30 percent in some areas." As an example of evolutionary pressure, the book describes how before modern medicine, impacted wisdom teeth often became infected and led to death. The authors appear to find it plausible for evolution to act through differential death rates resulting from differences in the number of wisdom teeth and yet find it implausible that death rates could vary in different regions because of differential intelligence as an adaptation to extreme cold. While Stringer and McKie describe how noses and skin color have been shaped in different regions, they deny that there are any cognitive differences and they withhold from readers the modern literature on brain size and IQ. Perhaps least forthright in this regard is the citation (p. 177) of Beals et al.'s (1984) study of worldwide variation in cranial size (which I cited earlier) and their attribution of these racial differences only to "climate," as though climate is not a likely potent source of natural selection for intelligence.

I thought the book was excellent. As a geographer, I am interested in human origins and migrations. I found this book to be well written and well researched. I have shared it with several of my anthropologist friends who have also enjoyed the material. I would recommend this book to anyone with similar interests.

It is an informative and well-written book. For a lay-person interested in the origins of humankind, it is almost a must-read. The book is thorough, and use a multitude of well-documented sorces to back its claims. However, it is tarnished by an ever reoccurring tendency to throw punches rather than educate. After a while you simlpy get a little tired of this ("OK, I get the point. You don't care much for the multiregionalists!"). The thing is that personal attacks and slander do not belong in a book that claims to be scientific. Not even in the preface.

In an otherwise excellent book, brace yourself for somewhat petty personal opinions!

I disagree with the two reviews that have been made of this book. Stringer does a great job of getting his point across, and he does not treat neandertals in a poor way. In fact, he is quite an expert on them, having already written an entire book only about them. What this seems to be is that two people whose theories Stringer skillfully tears apart (Multiregionalism, for example) have both penned their anger in having been outwitted here, in an attempt to discredit the book. Stringer defends his claims very well, apparently too well.

In "African Exodus", Chris Stringer, the leading proponent of the Out of Africa view of human origins, shows himself to be obsessed with Neandertals. He is obsessed with showing how absolutely different, incapable, and, ultimately "not human" they were. Whether one believes him or not depends on what one knows about Neandertal cultural capabilities. Apparently Stringer is unaware of or is deliberately ignoring an increasing body of archaeological evidence that suggests that "archaic" humans like Neandertals had quite sophisticated cultural capabilities, and that these capacities, including language, may extend back to *at least* 400,000 years ago. This is bad enough, but Stringer makes things worse. In an attempt to paint all multiregionalists as unrepentant racists, he links them with the theories of Carleton Coon, and tries to demonstrate that Coon was an unrepentant racist. He does this by describing an incident in the Harvard men's room, which seems to this reviewer like nothing more than an exercise in bad taste. Finally, Stringer tries to make himself look heroic by describing his rescue of one of the Krapina fossils he was studying in Croatia. The problem is, the incident he describes sounds awfully similar to one the paleoanthropologist Fred Smith described iin Trinkaus and Shipman's "The Neandertals"(1993). Stringer has undoubtedly done some fine work, and raised some worthwhile questions, but in his zeal to link multiregionalism to racism, he has also left out a lot of valuable material. One doesn't even get an idea of what multiregionalism is from his book. Although the book doesn't take much time to read, and is written in a style easily accessible to lay people, I would not recommend it. He is too biased, and there are too many lapses of either taste or judgment to make it a worthwhile addition to the libraries of those who are interested in human evolution.

Christopher Stringer does an amazingly poor job of evaluating the issue of human origins. He shows either a profound lack of understanding of the competing viewpoints or an intentionally unethical treatment of them. Even the subtitle of his book - The Response to the Bell Curve - is misleading. It implies that those who do not agree with his opinion support the findings of the Bell Curve. Instead of analyzing the data in terms of strict scientific methodology of hypothesis testing and REFUTATION he sets up a strawman which he tears down. Unfortunately this strawman bears little or no resemblance to the actual theories that he is claiming to refute. By continually portraying his theories as the ONLY basis on which all of humanity can unite under a common heritage, he misrepresents opposing views to the point of slander. He intentionally links today's multiregionalists(opposing viewpoint) with the ill-conceived theories of the past when these authors have consistently and effectively demonstrated how they significantly differ. He clearly hopes to link those who disagree with him to racist scientists of the past. Again, this either demonstrates that Christopher Stringer has not bothered to read the literature in his own field or he is intentionally attempting to misrepresent others.

A great chunk of this book is about the origin and disappearance of the Neanderthal. The entire book is poorly written and disorganized.

Avoid.

This work provides an excellent summary of the "Out of Africa" model that first burst upon the world in the famous time magazine "New Eve" cover in 1987. Stringer, a paleonotologist, was one of the first--althought not <i>the</i> first as he claims-- to propose that every single person (outside of Africa) now alive is the descendant of a small group of humans who left Africa between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago. Until the advent of "DNA" reverse transcriptase technology (commonly known from its use in criminal investigations) Stringer's theory was just one more interpretation of mute bones and stones. The revolutionary work of Mary Ravullo, amongst others, now proves that all humans are indeed descended from a tiny population (probably 2-3000 "breeding" females) 200,000 years ago. The DNA evidence shows that there is far more genetic diversity <i>within</i> Africa than in the rest of the world. Until the DNA discoveries, Stringer was pretty much out in the wilderness against the paleontological orthodoxy that the "races" of mankind had evolved from populations of Neanderthal and <i>H. erectus</i>. Despite the counter-intuitive nature of this "multi-regional" hypothesis, the skimpy fossil record seemed to support it. The DNA evidence, however, is so overwhelmingly solid it seems unlikely to ever be overthrown; unlike the fossil evidence, in which conclusions are much like figure skating scores, highly subjective and open to endless debate.

When sticking to the science of bones and blood, McKie and Stringer produce solid scientific writing for the non-Academic.

However, they severely mar the book with character assassination of Stringer's paleontological rivals, a puerile political agenda and environazi propaganda. Instead of analysizing the work of said rivals, the authors stoop to gossipy anecdotes to smear them. It was totally unnecessary and a good editor wouldn't have let them get away with it. Eliminating these distractions and a clearer focus on the science (and its conclusions) would have made this book a classic.

Another grievous, and, again, totally unnecessary addition, are the authors ignorant and slanderous remarks about American politics and American conservatives. To a British or Continental audience, these observations are probably accepted at face value. To anyone conversant with the American political scene, (e.g. page 246) their remarks are baseless, slanderous and make the authors look ridiculous. They also fling assaults on the book <i>The Bell Curve</i> distorting, with slash and burn attacks, what Herrenstein and Murray actually wrote; they create a caricature and proceed to attack it instead of the real book.

Finally, the concluding chapters launch into a litany of the Far Left's enivronmental myths and fantasies--conjuring up everything from the Global Warming hoax, to the racist "noble savage" protrayal of American Indians, to the man as the "killer" ape "destroying" the planet. Not surprisingly, little proof, beyond the usual ritual incantations of the environut creed, is offered.

The authors stray way beyond their ken in many areas and their ignorance and prejudice are embarrasingly on display. Without these flaws, the authors fluent and easily read prose would have made this book a landmark work. With them, it is reduced to a mishmash of scientific fact and calumny that ultimately hurt Stringer's cause far more than they advance it.