Beginning with his stunning discovery of a 1.5-million-year-old skeleton near Kenya’s lake Turkana, world-renowned anthropologist Richard Leakey explores our fossil record and asks fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of the human species.
Editorial Reviews
"Famed paleoanthropologist Leakey relates an intellectual odyssey, describing his discoveries of human origins and his reflections on the nature of humanity." —Publishers Weekly
"Readable, exciting and provocative big sky popular science." —Washington Post Book World
"Crisply written…It is not often that a major participant in so contentious a field delivers such a vivid, generally evenhanded summation of the current state of that science." —New York Times Book Review
"Autobiography and analysis both pivot on the discovery in 1984 by Leakey and his associates of 'the Turkana boy,' a 1.5-million-year-old Homo erectus fossil. The 'eureka!' of the find is palpable...Vintage Leakey." —Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Richard Leakey is the world’s most famous living paleoanthropologist. He resigned from his position as chairman of the National Museums of Kenya when Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi appointed him to head the Kenya Wildlife Service. His parents were the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey. His half-brother is the leading plant scientist, Colin Leakey.
Roger Lewin, PhD, is a biochemist, the former deputy editor of the British magazine New Scientist, and the author of Making Waves: Irving Dardik and His Superwave Principle, as well as many other highly praised books on biology such as Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos and Patterns in Evolution: The New Molecular View.
