First in Line: Tracing Our Ape Ancestry - Hardcover

Gundling, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300104146 ISBN 13: 9780300104141

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2005

Synopsis

Despite Darwin’s bold contention in 1871 that the likely ancestor for Homo sapiens was an African ape, the scientific community hesitated for decades before accepting small-brained but bipedal walking “apes” from southern Africa as direct human ancestors. Remains of the australopiths, as these bipedal apes are now called, were first discovered in 1924, yet 25 years passed before the australopiths found their place on the human family tree. This book is the first to document in detail this paradigm shift in paleoanthropology between 1924 and 1950.
Tom Gundling examines a period in anthropological history when ideas about what it means to be human were severely tested. Drawing on extensive primary sources, many never before published, he argues that the reinterpretation of early human fossils came about at last because of changes in theoretical approach, not simply because new and more complete fossils had been recovered. Gundling concludes with a review of the most significant post-1950 events in the field of paleoanthropology.

About this title

About the Author

Tom Gundling is assistant professor of anthropology, William Paterson University of New Jersey.

Reviews

One of the most important fossils of paleoanthropology is a skull discovered in South Africa in 1924 by anatomist Raymond Dart. But the skull's assignment to revolutionary status was several decades in the making, an intellectual process here analyzed by Gundling. The overturning of one scientific theory by another could be considered an arcane topic; however, the popularity of the landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn (1970), would seem to undermine that premise, and Gundling makes a case study of Kuhn's ideas. Gundling explains a process by which Dart's fossil, after initially being disparaged by establishment figures as an ape ancestor, came to be accepted by 1950 as a human ancestor. Gundling connects the papers and symposia by which Dart was vindicated for the growing number of readers au courant on the science of human origins. Gilbert Taylor
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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300104146
• ISBN 13: 9780300104141
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 222