African Genesis; A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man [Hardcover]

Robert Ardrey (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co; First Edition edition (June 1961)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689100132
• ISBN-13: 978-0689100130
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,461,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to human origins and the nature of man, February 11, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Cheshire, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: African Genesis; A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (Hardcover)

For those dissatisfied with the ludicrous baggage of the world's gods and religions in seeking answers to questions on the origin of mankind and the source of human behaviour, Robert Ardrey is a good place to start. Though some of his conclusions are now outdated by modern research, no one has written with more poetry and skill on this topic than Ardrey. Throughout his quartet of books on human origins and behaviour [African Genesis is the first of the four] Ardrey shows how mankind is less of a fallen angel and more of a risen ape; and that man truly is still only a halfway house between the ape and the human being.

After a Broadway flop American playwright Robert Ardrey [author of the play Thunder Rock and the script for the film Khartoum among others] toured East and Southern Africa in the early 1960s. This was a time when astonishing fossil discoveries were being made in the Olduvai Gorge by the Leakey family and by others showing that humanoids had originated in Africa some 2 million years ago. Ardrey talked to the fossil-hunters, the palaeontologists and the anthropologists and learned all he could of the new discoveries and their implications for human origins and behaviour.

Ardrey's main thesis is that mankind was born in Africa over 2 million years ago, and for most of that two million years the species' success has been largely dependant on its ability to kill. Without that underlying hard edge the species would have vanished aeons ago along with all the others that failed to survive. And only if we take that unpalatable truth about ourselves into account can modern mankind be truly understood.

In this book Ardrey's hero is Australian-born palaeontologist Raymond Dart who discovered and named the first Australopithecus Africanus skull in the 1930s, and who correctly identified Africa as the first home of the human species and A. Africanus as a human ancestor in the face of ridicule and rejection by the scientific establishment for 30 years. The book is moving and beautifully written. If you want to understand human nature, and the possibilities for both the past and the future of the species, there is no better place to start than African Genesis.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written introduction to mankind's animal origins, December 28, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Cheshire, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: African Genesis; A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (Hardcover)

For those dissatisfied with the ludicrous baggage of the world's gods and religions as the origin of mankind and the source of human behaviour, Robert Ardrey is a good place to start. Though some of his conclusions are now outdated by modern research, no one has written with more poetry and skill on this topic than Ardrey. Throughout his quartet of books on human origins [African Genesis is the first of the four] Ardrey shows how mankind is less of a fallen angel and more of a risen ape; and that man truly is still only a halfway house between the ape and the human being.

After a Broadway flop American playwright Robert Ardrey [author of the play Thunder Bay and the script for the film Khartoum among others] toured East and Southern Africa in the early 1960s. This was a time when astonishing fossil discoveries were being made in the Olduvai Gorge by the Leakey family and by others showing that man had originated in Africa some 2 million years ago. Ardrey talked to the fossil-hunters, the palaeontologists and the anthropologists and learned all he could of the new discoveries and their implications for human origins and behaviour.

Ardrey's main thesis is that mankind was born in Africa over 2 million years ago, and for most of that two million years the species' success has been largely dependant on its ability to kill. Without that underlying hard edge the species would have vanished aeons ago along with all the others that failed to survive. And only if we take that unpalatable truth about ourselves into account can modern mankind be truly understood.

The book is moving and beautifully written. If you want to understand human nature, and the possibilities for the future of the species, there is no better place to start than African Genesis.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book on African anthropology., January 1, 2001

By 

kamran (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: African Genesis; A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (Hardcover)

African Genesis is a book that deals with experiments, scientific facts, and evolutionary developments. Even though its old you still have to respect all of the different information in this book. Ardrey's first explanation's are the importance of territory. He used two studies done by other Anthropologists. One with ants the other with birds. The red ant experiment was done by Eugene Maris, it was simply a little bridge that the ants wouldn't cross to leave their territory, but would cross when coming back. Eugene Maris's other works are explained in great detail in this book. His other experiments were more interesting. The bird experiment, done by Eliot Howard, explained the importance of a male establishing its territory before anything else; with birds and apes. It explains an error in Darwin's teachings of man, claiming that sexual tendencies are the first priority. Howard, in all his long career, never knew of a male bird, with territory, to lose a mate; nor a male bird without territory to gain one. Ardrey shows some of these same examples later in the book with gorillas.

Its stuff like this that makes me believe evolution over creation. Reading though the chapters the relationships of us to Australopithecus africanus or erectus is amazing. According to this book A africanus was a carnivorous smaller type of gorilla, erectus was a vegetarian and was bigger than africanus. Ardrey's Romantic fallacy deals with many animals that had true emotions and showed some examples. You see its all evolution. The last chapter is a laudatory approach to free speech. Ardrey is humble about agreeing with him or not, but not to ignore natural sciences brought to us. We are an unfinished revolution he says. He continues and then relates back to Africa's origin of man. The next book I will look for is where this one left off; for this left off at our stage. I would have liked him to continue and explain how all the different races formed if we came from Africa. But that may be too much for this book. What matters is after you read this book you have a clear understanding of Darwin's decent of man. You know that evolution is a long process and has many debates (like Ardrey's 24 paragraph debate of evidence that the use of weapons is a human legacy from the animal world). Anybody that is interested in the evolution of man and African anthropology, you'll want to start with this book.