Product Description

Our ability to walk on two legs is not only a characteristic human trait but one of the things that made us human in the first place. Once our ancestors could walk on two legs, they began to do many of the things that apes cannot do: cross wide open spaces, manipulate complex tools, communicate with new signal systems, and light fires. Titled after the last two words of Darwin's Descent of Man and written by a leading scholar of human evolution, Lowly Origin is the first book to explain the sources and consequences of bipedalism to a broad audience. Along the way, it accounts for recent fossil discoveries that show us a still incomplete but much bushier family tree than most of us learned about in school.

Jonathan Kingdon uses the very latest findings from ecology, biogeography, and paleontology to build a new and up-to-date account of how four-legged apes became two-legged hominins. He describes what it took to get up onto two legs as well as the protracted consequences of that step--some of which led straight to modern humans and others to very different bipeds. This allows him to make sense of recently unearthed evidence suggesting that no fewer than twenty species of humans and hominins have lived and become extinct. Following the evolution of two-legged creatures from our earliest lowly forebears to the present, Kingdon concludes with future options for the last surviving biped.

A major new narrative of human evolution, Lowly Origin is the best available account of what it meant--and what it means--to walk on two feet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #692776 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Review
"Kingdon's book shows the value of the perspective of a careful student of "old-fashioned" natural history". -- Bernard Wood, BioScience

"Throughout, he relates anatomy to ecology and geography". -- Alison Jolly, London Review of Books

Jonathan Kingdon is . . . singularly well equipped to cast an eye over the thorny problem of human origins. -- Bernard Wood , Bioscience

Writing is lucid and his illustrations are beautiful in showcasing just how this important component of human evolution took place. -- Ann Haley MacKenzie , American Biology Teacher

Review
[A] remarkable new book. . . . [I]n Kingdon we find a primate who is unafraid to give the establishment a good hard shake, and whose keen powers of observation and reasoning make him impossible to summarily dismiss. . . . Indeed so packed with novel ideas is Lowly Origin that it presents us with a picture of human evolution quite unlike anything that has come before it.
(Tim Flannery New York Review of Books )

Lowly Origin is brimming with information, insight, experience and speculation about how we became human. . . . [A] comprehensive and evocative rendition of who we are and how we fit in to the natural world.
(Donald Johanson Los Angeles Times Book Review )

Elegant and thoughtful. . . . Jonathan Kingdon commands a unique position at the interface of science and art . . . Whether or not [he] manages to convince you of his larger thesis, you will be provoked along the way by the many connections he makes. And just as important, Lowly Origin is a landmark for its thoroughness in integrating the story of human evolution (which he brings up to the present day) with that of the evolving landscapes and habitats of the African continent.
(Ian Tattersall Natural History )

Lowly Origin . . . provides much new food for thought for lay readers and specialists alike.
(Osbjorn M. Pearson Journal of Anthropological Research )

Naturalist-artist Kingdon is well known for his books on African mammals and his beautiful illustrations of them. . . . [This] book is well written and charmingly illustrated.
(Choice )

Every so often . . . a new concept comes into being. In Lowly Origin, Jonathan Kingdon puts forward just such a new concept. . . . Lowly Origin is full of insights and displays the profound knowledge of African geography and ecology that is the hallmark of all Kingdon's work.
(Peter Andrews Times Literary Supplement )

Jonathan Kingdon is a subtle amalgam of artist and scientist. He has a deep and up-to-date knowledge of human prehistory, and of the topology and geography of Africa, the continent where most of human prehistory happened. But he is also our leading zoological artist, and I think it must be his artist's eye that gives his writing style its vividness. . . . Kingdon is a wonderful example of a "Third Culture" writer: a scientist who communicated his original ideas to fellow scholars in books that can be read--and enjoyed--by any educated person.
(Richard Dawkins Times Literary Supplement )

Lowly Origin is an evocative book that highlights one of the key factors that makes us human--our bipedality. . . . Kingdon's writing is lucid and his illustrations are beautiful in showcasing just how this important component of human evolution took place. . . . A must read. A must have.
(Ann Haley MacKenzie American Biology Teacher )

Jonathan Kingdon is . . . singularly well equipped to cast an eye over the thorny problem of human origins. . . . Kingdon has read widely and wisely. . . . [He] does not claim to have found the answer to human origins. The real message of the book is the rich contextual evidence it provides. Wise students of human evolutionary history would be well advised to think carefully about that message.
(Bernard Wood Bioscience )

There are people who will authoritatively disagree . . . however, any subsequent account will have to parry Kingdon's version with equally explicit consideration of . . . equally vivid pictures of ways of life.
(Alison Jolly London Review of Books )

Review
Jonathan Kingdon's work is one of the things that make the present day such an exciting time for anyone with the slightest intellectual curiosity. His subject matter is our profound and thrilling human origins, and his stance toward it makes his work unique and priceless. Not only is Kingdon a scientist of commanding authority, he is an artist whose hand transmits his knowledge through drawings so swift and graceful that revelation and admiration arrive together. His wonderful new book takes a characteristically original look at one of the things that makes us human: our walking on two legs. There is no one alive who could do it better.
(Philip Pullman, author of "The Amber Spyglass" )

Customer Reviews

Neotenous niche thieves rule!
The next time you're tending your garden, pause a moment. Consider your position and local environment. Squatting down or on your knees, reaching around to weed or till, you are likely repeating a similar pose held by your ancient ancestors. According to Jonathan Kingdon, our African forebears started along their evolutionary path rooting about on the woodland floor seeking dinner. When conditions changed, they stood up to seek better places. The result was a questing ape that ultimately filled nearly every useful site on our planet. It will take serious research, an analytical mind and top-notch writing skills to surpass or supplant this superb study. Some artistic skills wouldn't go amiss, either.

Kingdon has produced the finest work on human evolution since Darwin's Descent of Man. His focus is our upright stance, but he examines far more than simply physiology in explaining how we expanded around the globe. The story of human evolution was upended by Raymond Dart in 1924. Before then, as Kingdon relates, it was believed pre-humans grew large, useful brains before descending from the trees. Dart's Taung Child demonstrated upright walking developed long before our mighty minds. Why this was so is a question that has plagued anthropologists for decades. Kingdon lists thirteen theories for why we stood upright - then demolishes them thoroughly. He also peels away the idea that there's a clearly traceable lineage of successive steps from early hominins to modern humans. For one thing, he reminds us, fossil location doesn't necessarily reflect points of origin.

The key word in Kingdon's title is not "how", but "why". Each species is adapted to its current environmental condition. Walking implies relocation and he posits that an East African "ground ape" likely followed rivers to their origins and beyond in the quest for resources. At some point, pre-human species became "niche thieves" - occupying or invading empty or inhabited resource areas. Vagaries of climate, the onset of disease or direct competition led to further changes in our physiology. We got better at walking, but we also learned new habits or improved on old ones. Twigs used to probe for food led to sticks for defence or attack, ending in spears for hunting. Spear casting is practiced from an early age in hunter-gatherer societies - young boys develop hunting skills through play activities.

The retention of child-like traits is called "neoteny". Although this term is usually applied to body forms, especially facial features, it may also refer to behaviour. To Kingdon, childhood skills encouraged brain development to make us better hunters. Unfortunately, while granting us more complex reasoning ability, brain enlargement and ingenuity granted us access to a widening zone of niches without giving us insight into the impact of that exploitation. It has also led to humans setting themselves apart from the remainder of the animal kingdom. That fallacy, he urges, must be corrected, and soon if our species is to survive. We must not play with the planet any longer.

Kingdon's thorough analysis of who we are and how we arrived at today's condition is unquestionably the best available. A fine writer, his African origins are reflected in many vignette descriptions of environments and their inhabitants. In addition to his prose talents is a capacity for vivid illustration. He presents many evolutionary scenarios that include self-portraits as an element in comparative studies. This book will endure and should be required reading in any course in anthropology or sociology, let alone ecology. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Get in touch with our ancestors
I recommend this book to anyone wanting to better understand our ancestors, not as unearthed fossils, but as living creatures who roamed the earth. Kingdon uses his own illustrations to bring us face-to-face with these ancient creatures, and to show just how we arrived on the scene. I am a scientist, but not an anthropologist, and have to admit that I needed to read the book twice to really understand it. Kingdon does not hand the reader easy answers, and does not provide summaries -- but rather proposes scenarios and dynamics that played out over several million years. This book is a delight, but it requires patience and/or some rereading.