Download The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution AudioBook Free
In his new e book, The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack, individual paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long custom of "individual exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of individual evolution. Drawing partly by himself career - from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman - Tattersall offers an idiosyncratic go through the competitive world of paleoanthropology, beginning with Charles Darwin 150 years ago, carrying on through the Leakey dynasty in Africa, and concluding with the latest astonishing studies in the Caucasus. The book's name identifies the 1856 breakthrough of a plainly very old skull cap in Germany's Neander Valley. The possessor possessed a brain as large as a modern human but much, low braincase with a prominent brow ridge. Scientists attempted hard to explain away the inconvenient probability that this was not actually our direct relative. One extreme interpretation suggested that the maintained leg bones were curved by both rickets and by a life on horseback. The pain of the unfortunate individual's affliction possessed triggered him to chronically furrow his brow in agony, leading to the abnormal development of bone above the eye sockets. The subsequent history of individual evolutionary studies is packed with likewise fanciful interpretations.
