Braindance

Anthropologist Falk presents a popular account of the current theories of human origins. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Paleontologist Falk, an anthropology professor at the State University of New York, challenges traditional theories about the immediate ancestors of the species homo through reexamination of such hominid fossil records as the skeleton known as Lucy, unearthed by Donald Johanson in 1986, which she maintains is much more apelike than humanlike. While the rapid growth in size of the human brain has been thought to occur along with our ancestors' development of bipedalism, Falk points out that footprints of an upright species have been dated millions of years earlier than records of a large-brained human. To explain the lag, she offers a "radiator theory" in which the brain grew as it took on cooling functions required as the species encountered greater exposure to sunlight. Current neurological studies and fossil research are combined as the author discusses brain lateralization and gender differences in brain organization. Falk makes much of the travails that she has encountered in proposing ideas that oppose established thought, to the detriment of her frequently intriguing account.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Add yet another voice to the chorus of contention surrounding human origins. Falk (Anthropology/SUNY at Albany), describes how she unwittingly took on some of the grand old men in the field in one of her earliest papers. There, she declared that Raymond Dart had misidentified a portion of the skull of the Tuang baby, the famous South African fossil that led to the naming of this hominid line as australopithecine. Dart's mistake, Falk said, led him to believe that the fossil was more human than apelike--a claim by Falk that resulted in a series of papers and counterpapers pitting her against another of the Old Guard, Columbia's Ralph Holloway. Falk's point is that the australopithecines generally had more apelike brains in spite of evidence that they walked upright. Bipedalism predates the explosive brain expansion that defines the earliest Homo lines. So what caused the three-fold increase in brain size? Falk's explanation involves climate. Bipedalism, she says, allowed our ancestors to wander farther afield in savannahlike regions where they were subjected to solar heating as well as gravity. But a little too much heat fries the brain. What Falk and colleagues found is that one hominid line developed a series of holes in the skull through which venous blood, cooled in its return from skin, returned to cool the brain--a radiator mechanism absent in other hominid lines and apes. The complicated cooling system and growing brain size evolved together, with the savannah conditions favoring the evolution of a more intelligent, adaptable species--with a brain that has similar features to the ape but does more ingenious integration--choreographing the ``braindance.'' In saying that--and adding a lot of interesting new material on right-brain/left-brain and male/female differences--Falk has taken on Donald Johanson, etc., knocked Lucy from her pedestal, and scolded her colleagues for their trend toward ``splitomania.'' Her reasoning is intriguing, her courage admirable. Stay tuned. (Twenty illustrations--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Anthropology professor Falk challenges some of her discipline's most sacred cows in this controversial, entertaining account of the hominid brain. Questioning the findings of such notables as Raymond Dart (the Taung baby) and Donald Johnson (Lucy), Falk applies her knowledge of neuroanatomy and new fossil measurement techniques to the interpretation of major australopithecine discoveries. Her why bipedalism might have preceded the increase in hominid brain size on the hot savannas. Falk discusses in fascinating detail the evolution of brain lateralization and gender differences in the nervous system, and she presents these compelling arguments with a sense of adventure and humor. Recommended for general readers.
- Laurie Bartolini, Lincoln Lib., Springfield, Ill.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.