The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution [Hardcover]

Jeffrey K. McKee (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Early treatments of evolution presented our species' transformation from protohominid to Homo sapiens as an orderly affair, a matter of clear lineages and constant progress. That depiction, archaeologist Jeffrey McKee suggests, is a little too neat. Drawing on recent scholarly views of primate evolution and on chaos theory, he instead argues that coincidence, accident, and dumb luck are critically important components of our species' development.

"Human evolution," McKee writes, "has been the product of many forces that together made us neither inevitable nor probable." The same holds true for other species; with all due respect to Lamarck, McKee adds, the giraffe came to have its long neck by a roll of the genetic dice--but a roll that lent the giraffe a competitive advantage over its shorter-necked browsing cousins, and therefore one subsequently reinforced by natural selection. Illustrating his argument with the well-worn "butterfly effect"--wherein a butterfly flapping its wings in Europe can produce a typhoon half a world away--McKee examines the role of chance in the origin and decline of species, emphasizing how unpredictable the dynamics of life can be, even within the bounds of natural laws.

Within such disorderly circumstances, McKee observes, chance favors species that retain generalized features and behaviors. Whereas "the fossil record is littered with extinct primates that became too specialized," he writes, the ancestors of modern humans were broadly diversified, adapting to different niches and thriving in the bargain. Written well and at an appropriately general level, McKee's book offers a useful survey of current evolutionary thought. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Unlike most entries in the spate of recent books discussing human evolution, this book focuses on the processes that gave rise to humans rather than detailing the steps in our lineage. McKee, professor of anthropology at Ohio State, argues that evolution is much less directed than many people might believe. The dominant forces, he asserts, are chance, coincidence and chaos, coming together through the process of autocatalysis. McKee draws intelligently on his work on computer modeling to bolster his position. He shows, for example, that randomly removing just a single female from a simulated human population of 10,000 breeding individuals can have dramatic effects on the evolution of that population. In one such computer run, with a seemingly nondescript female removed, the population went extinct only 321 generations into the simulation. McKee also looks at the prospects for the future of human evolution, asserting that "the lessons of human evolution are important, have a broad value, and may even help us set the course for our future survival." We are continuing to evolve, he contends, in significant ways, from changes in eyesight to alterations in our immune system. Additionally, our actions are influencing the world around us to such an extent that our own continued existence is at risk. Although there's not much that's truly new here, McKee does an admirable job of presenting his ideas. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press; First Edition edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081352783X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813527833
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,598,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How we got bright enough to wonder how we got bright, March 21, 2001

By 

Jeremy M. Harris (Worthington, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution (Hardcover)

By choosing "The Riddled Chain" for his title, Prof. McKee may have meant to invoke both meanings of the R-word. First, the eons-long ascent of living things from isolated cells to hyper-cerebral humans was so riddled with the vagaries of chance, coincidence and chaos that a repeat experiment on a twin planet might stall at some low level, or branch in unimaginably strange ways, or fail completely. Second, the unlikely chain that did unfold on Earth is still to some extent a mystery, a riddle waiting to be solved.

Although McKee's informal style and frequent flashes of humor make for pleasant reading, the book also has much to teach. Its central theme reflects the growing realization among scientists that spontaneous development to the level of thinking, planning creatures is a rare event, perhaps much rarer than previously thought. The author puts it succinctly in his opening chapter: "....Human evolution has been the product of many forces that together made us neither inevitable nor probable."

Drawing from Chaos Theory, McKee explores the drastic consequences that minute initial-condition changes can cause in long-duration, many-branched processes such as biological evolution. At the end of such a process it may be impossible to distinguish the contributions of truly random events, such as gene mutations and natural disasters, from the deterministic but random-appearing effects of chaotic variation. One way to "separate the variables" is to construct a simulation. Reporting on an example of such evolutionary modeling by computer, McKee describes surprising results that seem to confirm the famous "butterfly effect" often cited in time-travel science fiction.

Although he underscores the inevitable roles of chaos and unpredictability, McKee does not ignore the feedback phenomena that stabilized evolution and drove it in the direction of increasing complexity. Natural selection and its companion forces, gene flow and genetic drift, are given a thorough treatment which includes cases where selection fails, such as accidental early deaths unrelated to genetic fitness. An entire chapter is devoted to the concept of autocatalytic (self-driven) evolution and its continuing importance as advanced species like H. sapiens willfully modify their environment and replace natural selection with artificial selection through social policies and medical intervention.

One of the book's most engaging chapters underscores the limitations of evolution, such as having to fashion every new model by tinkering nondestructively with an existing one (in contrast to supernatural design, which could start each species with a clean sheet.) McKee amusingly details some of the dubious orthopedic compromises involved in raising mammals from quadruped to biped status, freeing their increasingly articulated front feet to become full-time hands.

In "A Tale of Two Sites," the author gives a fascinating account of his fossil-hunting during ten years in South Africa. While the main thrust of the book is dedicated to helping the reader understand big-picture issues in evolutionary anthropology, a detailed description of McKee's inspirations and frustrations in field work adds depth and practical substance to the theoretical portions of the book.

I greatly enjoyed "The Riddled Chain" and believe it will both entertain and educate anyone wanting to learn more about the awesome and mysterious, but not miraculous, origins of humanity.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Choas Teohry, September 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution (Hardcover)

Finally someone has written a book on human evolution that is different from all the rest. The Riddled Chain takes a new theoretical angle on human evolution. Much to my surprise, all that theory was quite readable and fascinating. Sure, McKee has some of the usual stuff about excavations and the sequence of fossils, but he does it with purpose without getting into a bunch of boring details. He also avoids the childish spats and name-calling that show up in so many human evolution books. What does McKee do? He gently guides you into some pretty heady stuff.

The trick is that you don't notice how deep you've gotten. Just when your attention and understanding start to flag a bit, he pull in some amusing anecdote to make it all clear and keep you reading with a smile.

His main point is that chance, coincidence, and chaos are important and necessary for evolution. He demolishes the over-simplified theories that climate change leads to human adptations such as bipedalism.

Instead he proposes that evolution is self-driven. Chance events such as mutations must coincide with chance conditions, and then leads human evolution in one direction rather than another. He applies chaos theory, which I never understood until now, to show that small events can have big, long-term consequences.

The book ends with a look at our future evolution that is both interesting and scary.

McKee says in his preface that he thinks science is fun. His book certainly shows that. You'll have fun reading it, and you'll never think about human evolution in quite the same way you did before.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking Book, September 26, 2000

By 

Ronald E. Martin (Oak Park, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence and Chaos in Human Evolution (Hardcover)

The writing of The Riddled Chain is fluid and easy to read, yet firmly seated in evolutionary theory. Most college biology courses spend an enormous amount of time studying these concepts and their effects. Luckily, you don't have to be in a class to enjoy this book.

McKee goes to great detail in explaining the most acccepted evolutionary theories so that anyone can understand them. He then clarifies what he agrees with and what he doesn't and how those theories relate to his own hypothesis of natural selection. For example, I enjoyed the section dealing with how giraffes' circulation systems adapted as their neck length grew and now I can easily explain this to my sons.

I found the final chapter extremely thought provoking because it not only dealt with the past, but the future. I highly recommend this book for anyone to read and consider.