Apes... to Humans??

Rebecca Stefoff

I read Origins by Rebecca Stefoff, the first book of the series Humans: An Evolutionary History about the discoveries made by paleoanthropologists that helped scientists, for the past century and a half, understand the journey of human evolution. Stefoff wrote this book to deepen one's understanding of the search for traces of the earliest human ancestors - ancient apes. This led to the determination that the evolution of the human line split from apes over 5 million years ago! Numerous acclaimed scientists contributed to important findings such as the first significant discovery in November, 1924 in Johannesburg, South Africa. This was known as the "Taung Child" found by Raymond Dart, as well as "Lucy", "Ardipithecus" and many more hominids. I think the book's main conclusion is that our current situation as homo sapiens is highly unusual because, as it states, we are the only survivor of a "branching bush of evolution" including hominin species that had many offshoots who died off. I did like the book... it was very clear and easy to understand. The ideas and findings made me think more about human evolution and how we got here today. However, I feel it was a bit dry and repetitive at times. I would give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars and I do recommend it for readers who want a very detailed, factual blueprint of how humans have evolved to the way we are today.