The Fossil Trail - How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution

There are books that confidently announce they have all the answers, and then there are books like The Fossil Trail, whose subtitle—How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution—has the refreshing honesty to admit that science is often a gloriously untidy business. Not only are we trying to reconstruct several million years of human history from a scattering of ancient bones, but we’re also perpetually arguing about whether we’ve reconstructed the right history in the first place.

Published by Oxford University Press in 1995, Ian Tattersall’s wonderfully engaging book takes readers behind the scenes of palaeoanthropology, where the popular image of solemn scientists brushing dust from fossils gives way to a far livelier reality. Here, every newly unearthed skull threatens to overturn decades of accepted wisdom, every fragment of jawbone becomes the subject of passionate academic debate, and entire careers can hinge on whether a lump of fossilised bone is really a hip, a shoulder blade, or simply an unusually awkward-looking rock.

Tattersall, one of the world’s leading authorities on human evolution, is the perfect guide through this scientific detective story. Rather than simply presenting a neat family tree of human ancestors, he explores how that tree was assembled in the first place—and why it keeps being rearranged. Science, it turns out, is less like completing a jigsaw puzzle and more like discovering that someone has quietly replaced half the pieces while you were making a cup of tea.

The title is splendidly evocative. The Fossil Trail conjures images of intrepid explorers crossing deserts in search of humanity’s origins, which is indeed part of the story. But it is also a trail of ideas, mistakes, rivalries and revisions. Every fossil discovery adds another clue, while simultaneously raising three entirely new questions. One begins to suspect that evolution itself had an excellent sense of humour, carefully ensuring that the most important evidence would remain buried until just after somebody published a definitive textbook.

One of the book’s greatest pleasures is its insistence that uncertainty is not a weakness but the very engine of scientific progress. Far from pretending that every mystery has been solved, Tattersall demonstrates how hypotheses are tested, challenged and occasionally demolished by the next remarkable discovery. It is a reminder that knowledge is built patiently, often by people willing to spend weeks excavating a hillside in the hope of finding something smaller than a teacup and considerably older than civilisation.

This copy is in good condition, showing the gentle signs of having been appreciated rather than neglected. It has clearly survived rather better than the fossils discussed within its pages, most of which endured several million years of geological inconvenience before finally making their literary debut. The binding remains sound, the pages are clean, and it is ready to continue its evolutionary journey onto another bookshelf.

As always, Crappy Old Books delights in rescuing books that prove reality is considerably more fascinating than fiction. The Fossil Trail won’t settle every argument about human evolution—and Ian Tattersall would probably argue that no honest book ever could—but it will leave you with a renewed appreciation for the extraordinary chain of discoveries that allows us to peer back through deep time. It also offers one comforting thought: if future archaeologists ever judge our civilisation from the contents of a single rubbish tip, perhaps we should be a little more forgiving of what can be inferred from one rather battered fossil jawbone.

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