The Cradle of Humanity: How the changing landscape of Africa made us so smart

"Mark integrates not only geology, palaeontology and archeology in this book but also climate and vegetation change. He considers many of the new fossil finds and puts them into context. This is an excellent summary and shows how much we have learned over the past forty years or so. I well remember Richard Leakeiy coming to speak to my class as an undergraduate in the early 1970s and telling us about the new exciting finds in Kenya. It was particularly intriguing for me to read Richard’s preface to the book by Mark Maslin. What is particularly important is the geological context in which these early hominid finds have been found. We know now much more about the changing climate and vegetation of Africa at this time. I was pleased also to see the volcanology here as well as discussion of the environment as a whole. As an undergraduate I was taught by Basil King, a pioneer of the study of these volcanoes, and Bill Bishop, who studied the associated fauna that was found associated with the human remains. So I have always taken an interest in the African Story (another player in the story is Andrew Hill who helped demonstrate palaeontology to me as an undergraduate). “rapid periods of climate change were a key element in the rapid evolution and adaptation of humans” A key part of Maslins’s thesis is that rapid periods of climate change, as he documents in Africa, was a key element in the rapid evolution and adaptation of humans. Humans are, arguably, the only species that not only adapts to new environments but also adapts their environment to themselves. This book is the first to document these environmental changes so carefully, putting forward a powerful argument that we should not consider the bones without their environmental context. What I find particularly interesting, however, is that there is no mention of fire. It is now clear that fire plays an important part of maintaining savanna ecosystems and providing a diverse landscape but it is only over the past few years that it has been considered significant in the evolution of our planet. Yet it is fire that has been claimed to define what it is to be human. Perhaps now we are at the beginning of a new quest to investigate the role of fire in Africa at the time of human origins and evolution."