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    Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
    Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
    Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
    Audiobook7 hours

    Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils

    Written by Lydia Pyne

    Narrated by Randye Kaye

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Over the last century, the search for human ancestors has spanned four continents and resulted in the discovery of hundreds of fossils. While most of these discoveries live quietly in museums, there are a few that have become world-renowned celebrity personas. In Seven Skeletons, historian of science Lydia Pyne explores how seven such famous fossils of our ancestors have the social cachet they enjoy today.

    Drawing from archives, museums, and interviews, Pyne builds a cultural history for each celebrity fossil. These seven include the three-foot tall "hobbit" from Flores, the Neanderthal of La Chapelle, the Taung Child, the Piltdown Man hoax, Peking Man, Australopithecus sediba, and Lucy-all vivid examples of how discoveries of our ancestors have been received, remembered, and immortalized.

    With wit and insight, Pyne brings to life each fossil: how it is described, put on display, and shared among scientific communities and the broader public. This fascinating, endlessly entertaining book puts the impact of paleoanthropology into new context, a reminder of how our past as a species continues to affect, in astounding ways, our present culture and imagination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 16, 2016
    ISBN9781515976028
    Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils
    Author

    Lydia Pyne

    Lydia Pyne is a writer and historian, interested in the history of science and material culture. She has degrees in history and anthropology and a PhD in history and philosophy of science from Arizona State University, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her field and archival work has ranged from South Africa, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, and Iran, as well as the American Southwest. Lydia's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, History Today, Time, The Scientist, Nautilus, The Appendix, Lady Science and Electric Literature as well as The Public Domain Review, and her previous book was Seven Skeletons, the story of human origins. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is an avid rock climber and mountain biker.

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    Reviews for Seven Skeletons

    3.5/5

    18 ratings3 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Way behind on my reviews, gotta catch up before school starts! Prepare for short and choppy...

      Okay, this one was a mixed bag. The content completely carried the book, so it's a good thing this was nonfiction instead of fiction. I've been fascinated by early homonids since my biological anthropology class back in freshman year of college (my ideal major would have been English-History-Anthropology-Psychology with minors in Creative Writing and Women's studies, but alas, there is only so much time in the day). I'd actually learned about all but the last of the described skeletons before, though of course not in the detail that Pyne goes into here. If anything, I may have wanted more detail: How could scientists know from just a few bones of a single example of a different species that homonid was male or female? How can they tell that they're different species with only partial skeletons? How do scientists decide what makes a new species (except in the obvious case of homo floresiensis)? How did they preserve the spongy, not-actually-fossilized homo floresiensis bones? I would have liked to know more about the frequently-mentioned Java Man, but that would have ruined the title's alliteration and the book's symmetry.

      What's fascinating about this book, though, is that these questions aren't neglected by negligence but by choice. It's remarkable that this book isn't just about human evolution but, in fact, about how modern homo sapiens react to these skeletons: it's not just the scientific story, but the story of the media, the cultural impact. This actually would have made the book more appealing to me up front, since I'm very interested in how humans relate to each other and to the world around them. I would have made this much more obvious up front by slipping another word into the subtitle: "The Cultural Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils." But that might be the scholarly side of my publishing experience coming through--I can't exactly say that I know better than a trade editor about what titles catch attention. Probably that subtitle sounds too academic and stuffy for the educated, non-specialist reader.

      I can definitely tell the writer has potential, but there should have been a lot more editing in this. Granted, I was reading an ARC, so I have no idea how far ahead of the pub date this particular review copy was printed--it's quite possible it did get a lot more editorial help after this point. Some points:

      > In the space of three pages, three paragraphs begin, "Today, the Old Man..."
      > Three paragraphs are exactly repeated--I seriously hope this is something that was caught before the book went to print!
      > I could never figure out why some words were defined but not others. We're told that a scapula is "part of the shoulder" but we don't get a definition of paleoanthropology. I would guess that readers, even if they know what the separate parts mean, might want to know before diving into the text how, exactly, we can extrapolate about human species from fossilized bones. Dinosaurs are guesses enough, and it seems like we have far more of them than we have homonids. (Hey, that would have been a useful factoid to include! But I'm not docking points for that).
      > Puns, oh my heck. Here and there they're fun, but for some reason they were almost exclusively concentrated in a single chapter and involved repeated use of the phrase, "no bones about it." Ha flipping ha. You can't use that more than about twice without it becoming a groaner.

      Okay, this is picky, but Pyne hinted at a potentially fascinating point in the chapter on homo floresiensis before dropping it like a hot potato: the contemporary local legends of the ebu gogo, small human-like creatures that live in the forest (205). This is a ready-made opening for an interesting sentence or two here about the possibility of overlap between two species of homonid and the length of cultural memory, but Pyne doesn't follow it up. To be clear, the only reason I'm complaining about this is because I did a paper on it in college and because I'm fascinated by the ways some fairy tales are shaped by reality.

      Okay, on to quotes--not as many as usual, for which you're probably thankful.

      Quote Roundup

      74) I just love that the British Museum is saving satire, poetry, and cartoons about Piltdown Man along with the bones. This is exactly the kind of archival work I fantasize about.

      97) I must admit, I found it interesting how little Pyne mentioned religious opponents of human evolution. Here's one page where it is addressed. This was also the page where I really understood that this wasn't just a story about the skeletons, but public investment in their discovery and interpretation.

      220) Here's where there was an opportunity to discuss how scientists determine sexual dimorphism versus individual variation.

      222) I felt a little warm inside knowing that as far back as the 1920s/30s, a male archaeologist tried to nickname a fossil "Nelly" to combat what he saw as explicit sexism by referring to particular hominin discoveries as "man."

      Wow, almost none of my quotes were actually quotes. Don't think that's ever happened before...

      Overall, I recommend the book for its fascinating content, but not for structural or stylistic execution. But this recommendation is made with the caveat that I have no idea how close to final this ARC draft was when it was printed. And I'm a grumpy fan of continuous narrative who unfairly doesn't cut nonfiction writers a little slack.
    • 4/5
      When I was eight, I was going to be a paleontologist...I had a book on dinosaurs. When I was nine, I was going to be an anthropologist (I got a new book...), so despite 46 years since, I'm primed to like this book, which I got an early look at via First to Read.

      I have more than a passing familiarity with six of the seven - Old Man of La Chapelle (Neanderthal), Piltdown, Taung Child (Australopithicus africanus), Peking, Lucy - of course, and Flo the "Hobbit" (Homo floresiensis). I've devoted reading the past five to eight years to other things, so did not recognize Australopithicus sediba. Thanks to Ms. Pyne, I now do!

      Very nicely written, almost in a conversational tone, Ms. Pyne does a great job describing the history of each and why the significance of her chosen "celebrity" fossils. A recommended read.

      {A cool thing about reading advanced galleys...sometimes neat artifacts show up: on one page in the margin was an editor's note about needing confirmation of a source, as the article cited didn't have the quote. Bill O'Reilly avoids editors like that.}
    • 4/5
      This relatively short (243 pages of text in my review copy) readable book is a quick but interesting exploration of the history and cultural impact of some of the most pivotal discoveries of paleoanthropology, approached by examining 7 "famous" fossils, including the Piltdown Man (a hoax fossil), Lucy (named after John Lennon's "Lucy in the Sky" and classified as Australopithecus afarensis), and Flo (a Homo floresiensis, otherwise known as one of the island "Hobbit" people). While readers will learn about the fossils themselves, there's more focus on the scientists who found and promoted the fossils and resulting evolution of cultural ideas about humanity's ancient past. Each of the seven fossils has its own chapter, which in keeping with the theme are ordered by discovery date rather than fossil age--starting with a Neanderthal fossil found in the early 20th century and finishing with a discovery made in 2008. Thought-provoking and entertaining