In the Footsteps of Eve: The Mystery of Human Origins (Adventure Press)

In the Footsteps of Eve, with its carefully reasoned argument, challenges the conventional wisdom of half a century. It suggests that the true cradle of our species lies the fossil-rich limestone of South Africa rather than East African sites where Louis and Mary Leakey revolutionised modern paleoanthropology and where Don Johanson made the discovery of the ancient skeleton immortalised as Lucy. Dr.Lee Berger, a leader of the new generation of scientists whose recent discoveries have reshaped our ideas about human genesis, is an expert and engaging guide who offers a detailed yet always clear and readable overview of the quest for our origins, from Darwin to the present day. He makes a persuasive case for redrawing our ancient family tree. The reader joins him in deep caves where miner's head-lamp illuminate the long-buried bones that are the clues in the detective story that spanes more than three million years, and laboratories where patient researchers spend years assembling tiny shardes into the scull of the creature who walked into the Earth more than 5,000 generations ago. Readers can sit in on conferences where brilliant scientists engage in intellectual sparing matches as tense as any courtroom drama. And we share the electric thrill when he runs his fingertips across the fossilized footprint of young human female who walked along a South African beach more than 100,000 years ago- and suddenly realizes that this extraordinary find may alter our current perceptions of human history. In Footsteps of Eve introduces readers both to an outstanding, wonderfully articulate new voice in paleoanthropology and to a bold new theory of our earliest ancestry. Combining hard science and high drama, it is a book as it is important.