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This weekend I read Dragon Bone Hill by Noel T. Boaz and Russell L. Ciochon. I thought I would enjoy it a lot as it combined my love of China with my love of early hominids. It was a very well written book, covering everything you'd want to know. I wish I could find the equivalent book written about Neanderthals.
They started with the history of the excavations, the scientists involved and the early theories. They looked at the disappearance of the bones, and the different theories and controversies surrounding them. Then they looked at the modern interpretation of Peking Man and what he was like, and the world around him was like.
The looked at his skull, and proposed that it was thickened to protect from head trauma, and showed how the thickening related to different head injuries, quite interesting. They looked at the different arguments over the skills of Peking man, how it seemed likely that he had used fire, though some of the evidence that had gone to prove this in the past had since been disproved. They looked at his tool use how, unlike homo erectus in other parts of the world he never figured out how to make stone axes. Rather than questioning the mental ability of Asian homo erectus versus African homo erectus, they pointed out the differences in the type of stone available to Peking man, and how this would have not made effective stone axes, so it was more an environmental limitation than a intellectual one.
There was also some fascinating evidence about how homo erectus was more likely to be a scavenger than a hunter. Not only were his tools not sufficient to hunt a large mammal. But there were some interesting arguments involving tape worms that had come from the carviores and had adapted themselves to homo erectus. (and modern man). Science is fun because you can figure out things like eating behaviors, by tape worms, such a different form of evidence and approaches than is used in history and archeology.
The book also looked at the climate that Peking man lived in. He seemed to only be in the north during the more temperate times and headed south during the colder times. They also analyzed his ability to speak, which is very unlikely. Though as it's debatable whether or not Neanderthals had language it didn't come as much of a surprise to me that the signs seemed to be that homo-erectus did not. Though there were interesting discussions about microcepahlics that reminded me of Mandy and how much of a scientific anomaly she really is.
They also looked at cannibalism, I had to question the idea that cannibalism was really relevant to how much of a "primitive" versus "sophisticated" species homo-erectus was as cannibalism seems to be such a common trait for homo sapians. But the evidence seemed to be in favor of them having been cannibals, with no care of the dead at all as seen by Neanderthals. Though the skull breakages that were earlier thought to indicate cannibalism were later shown to have been made by hyenas.
It was interesting to look at the way things had previously been seen, a nice little tribe living together in the cave, and the way things are now believed to have been, it was actually a hyena den that the homo erectus were able to scare off through their use of fire to scavenge the remains of the hyena's meals.
The end of the book talked a lot about the idea of Clinial replacement, which I have to say I didn't understand completely. Human evolutionary theory is really something I'm just beginning to look into. And while I find it fascinating there is so much I just don't understand. I think perhaps I should get a book on that soon. I just love learning about the early hominids, and looking at ancient skulls so much. But it was a fun read and it's good to take a break now and then and read something different that you don't know very much about.
They started with the history of the excavations, the scientists involved and the early theories. They looked at the disappearance of the bones, and the different theories and controversies surrounding them. Then they looked at the modern interpretation of Peking Man and what he was like, and the world around him was like.
The looked at his skull, and proposed that it was thickened to protect from head trauma, and showed how the thickening related to different head injuries, quite interesting. They looked at the different arguments over the skills of Peking man, how it seemed likely that he had used fire, though some of the evidence that had gone to prove this in the past had since been disproved. They looked at his tool use how, unlike homo erectus in other parts of the world he never figured out how to make stone axes. Rather than questioning the mental ability of Asian homo erectus versus African homo erectus, they pointed out the differences in the type of stone available to Peking man, and how this would have not made effective stone axes, so it was more an environmental limitation than a intellectual one.
There was also some fascinating evidence about how homo erectus was more likely to be a scavenger than a hunter. Not only were his tools not sufficient to hunt a large mammal. But there were some interesting arguments involving tape worms that had come from the carviores and had adapted themselves to homo erectus. (and modern man). Science is fun because you can figure out things like eating behaviors, by tape worms, such a different form of evidence and approaches than is used in history and archeology.
The book also looked at the climate that Peking man lived in. He seemed to only be in the north during the more temperate times and headed south during the colder times. They also analyzed his ability to speak, which is very unlikely. Though as it's debatable whether or not Neanderthals had language it didn't come as much of a surprise to me that the signs seemed to be that homo-erectus did not. Though there were interesting discussions about microcepahlics that reminded me of Mandy and how much of a scientific anomaly she really is.
They also looked at cannibalism, I had to question the idea that cannibalism was really relevant to how much of a "primitive" versus "sophisticated" species homo-erectus was as cannibalism seems to be such a common trait for homo sapians. But the evidence seemed to be in favor of them having been cannibals, with no care of the dead at all as seen by Neanderthals. Though the skull breakages that were earlier thought to indicate cannibalism were later shown to have been made by hyenas.
It was interesting to look at the way things had previously been seen, a nice little tribe living together in the cave, and the way things are now believed to have been, it was actually a hyena den that the homo erectus were able to scare off through their use of fire to scavenge the remains of the hyena's meals.
The end of the book talked a lot about the idea of Clinial replacement, which I have to say I didn't understand completely. Human evolutionary theory is really something I'm just beginning to look into. And while I find it fascinating there is so much I just don't understand. I think perhaps I should get a book on that soon. I just love learning about the early hominids, and looking at ancient skulls so much. But it was a fun read and it's good to take a break now and then and read something different that you don't know very much about.
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