Lucys Child the Discovery of a Human Ancestor

by Donald C. Johanson, James Shreeve

Don Johanson discovered Lucy, the most famous and one of the most complete of hominid remains, in 1974. His controversial interpretation of the remains as representing an ancestor to all subsequent hominid species, including our own, and his bestselling book "Lucy - the Beginnings of Humankind" established him as the most famous living palaeontologist, his one rival being Richard Leakey, whose views of human evolution remain entirely opposed to Johanson's. In this book, Johanson weaves together the story of his return to Africa in 1986, and the discovery of another extraordinary hominid specimen, with a history of the search for human origins and of his bitter disagreements with Leakey.

Genres: Science, Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, Evolution, Africa, Biology

Paperback

First published October 1, 1989

About the author

Donald Carl Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist. He is known for discovering the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.

Reviews

[Rossdavidh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Donald Johanson was the leader of the expedition that discovered “Lucy”, perhaps the most famous hominid fossil in the world. I have read books of his before, but it has been quite a few years, so who knows, perhaps my memory is faulty. My impression, subjective as it is, nonetheless must be said for this to be an honest review: this guy is not nearly so arrogant as he used to be.

I mean, I enjoyed his writing when I read his books in the past (otherwise why would I have bought another one), but I recall always getting the impression that Johanson was possessed of more than just a healthy self-esteem. I don't doubt that an ability to bash through life convinced that you are correct, and entitled to the lead, is a useful trait in many fields of work, and probably paleoanthropology is one of them. Nonetheless, when reading previous books I often thought something like, “wow, this guy tells a good story, and I'm so glad I'll never meet him, he sounds like a self-centered egotist”.

Somehow, either because I have changed or because he has, he does not seem at all that way in Lucy's Legacy. He tells the story of his career, and the field generally, going back to the time he found Lucy, and following it right up to the present day, a period of over 30 years now. He is careful to give credit to others, often points out where he was wrong, and is generous when describing the points of view of rivals in the field with whom he has disagreements.

He also has a good story to tell. In addition to what happened several million years ago in east Africa, he tells us a good deal about what has happened in the last four decades in the same area. The region in which he works has seen alternating periods of war and peace, and has also gone from bewildered tolerance of the funny western researchers because they have money, to producing their own homegrown paleoanthropology community. Johanson tells us how the politics and logistics of undertaking first-world science in some of the poorest parts of the third world can require more than just academic ingenuity.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the most basic level, the book is an account of the finding of a skeleton of Homo habilis at Olduvai Gorge by Donald Johansen, the person who found Lucy, the first and most complete skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis. However, Lucy’s Child provides far more. It provides an excellent history of the 20th Century’s astounding paleoanthropological finds and a superb summation of some of the major debates that are occurring in the discipline. (The book does lack information on the 1990’s due to its 1989 publishing date.) The book does not only provide a wealth of information but is an enjoyable read due to the talents of science writer James Shreeve.

This book is well worth the read. It should be read by anyone interested in the amazing finds that have occurred in the field of paleoanthropology and have revolutionized our understanding of ourselves as human beings.

Information for Instruction of Anthropology Gained from Lucy’s Child
• Matrix refers to any mineral deposits clinging to the bone that might help identify which stratum in the slope it originally came from. If the fossil is not in situ, matrix is the only sure way of pinpointing its age.
• Allometry is a phenomenon related to sexual dimorphism. It means that differences in anatomical size will lead to predictable changes in shape as well. A male gorilla can not be “grown” from a female gorilla just by expanding the dimensions of a female gorilla’s anatomy. His canines are not just larger than hers, they are proportionally larger as well, and their shape is different. Similarly, a female amounts to more than a scaled-down model of the male. Her front teeth are not only smaller than those of her male counterparts --they are proportionally smaller too. Since her jaw does not have to accommodate fuller front teeth, it can narrow toward the front into a distinct V shape.

[Ami Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1989, this book fills in the gap between the first Lucy book by Don Johanson and this book. Johanson updates you not just about what his team had been up to, but everyone else in the field as well (as of what had been published). While filling in that gap, you also get a brief re-cap of some of the history pre-Lucy that had taken place as well.

I found this book to be very interesting. What is nice about Johanson, is that he gives information and all the theories attached to it in a very um-biased way. He gives you his personal opinions, but he openly admits time and time again that they are just his personal beliefs and that it is not a fact and that other people could be right instead. He is very open to brainstorming ideas and asking questions, discussing things instead of just claiming you have the one true right answer. He does not seem to point fingers and play the blame game like so many other books do (when talking about who is right and who is wrong). Johanson likes to just present the information in as netural of a way as possible.

I really enjoyed reading this book and I look forward to reading the third Lucy book, Lucy's Legacy. I think anyone who enjoys this story of topic will enjoy this book as well.

[Betsy Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been following Donald Johanson's career since he found Lucy and have loved his desriptions of his process and hominid finds. He
Has been critisized for becoming an academic
instead of a dirt-digger but I don't think he's through with the field yet. The competition has surpasses Lucy so we'll see.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as exciting as "Lucy" but still a worthy book for study.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok so this book has been on my shelf awhile, and I realize that it is much out of date. Our "family tree" has been redrawn several times since this was written (1989), so if you want to know the current state of affairs don't bother with this book. It is however an interesting telling of hominid discovery up to that date, and of the actual workings of a dig, including politics and petty bickering among those in the field. Some merit to it.

[Judy]

This book, along with the Hominid Gang, by Delta Willis, illustrate the tremendous amount of egotism and speculation that ha pervaded the study of early man's evolution. Was Lucy an example of a direct ancestor of ours? The fossil evidence is still slight as to when hominids split off from hominoids, and then when man split off on his own.

[Kim Zinkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative. Although probably dated due to discoveries in the 30+ years since its publication, the book offers insight into the science of paleoanthropology...its agreements and disagreements among the practitioners!

[REBECCA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book goes into a discussion on the land rights and long standing connections with respect to the Leakeys as well questioning which specie came first, second or third thus leaving the reader which creation "Lucy's child" was. Still, a fascinating book on human creation.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel lucky to have had Johansen find it worthwhile to share his experiences in his fabulous experience, providing his thoughts and feelings, the demands, the thrills, and putting it into scientific context. And the writing is clear and makes you feel like a genius

[Eric C Abrahamsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johansson finds an almost complete skeleton of a homo erected.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE SEQUEL TO JOHANSON’S FIRST “LUCY” BOOK

Donald Carl Johanson (born 1943) is an American paleoanthropologist; he has also written 'Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind,' 'From Lucy to Language,' 'Ancestors: In Search of Human Origins,' and 'Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins.'

He wrote in the first chapter of this 1989 book, "the celebrity Lucy brought me had a bitter side as well. Along the way, I would also be called a prima donna, a slick operator, a publicity hound. I lost friends, including some of my closest colleagues in the field, whose interpretations of humanity's origins were thrown into serious doubt by Lucy and her Hadar companions. My hopes for a return to Ethiopia to complete the work we had started there would be frustrated again and again. Other field expeditions yielded nothing. Slowly I would come to doubt my famous luck. Eventually I would find myself... wondering whether I was finished as a practicing scientist." (Pg. 23)

He says about his relation with Richard and Mary Leakey, "'I think Don was right about the Hadar fossils the first time,' Richard said at the symposium... He believed that there were at least two species at Hadar, one of them 'some kind of primitive Homo.' His arguments, though, were exactly the ones I had used initially ... so I was prepared to counter them. I even offered to review the fossils with him, point by point, Richard declined... Mary Leakey attacked us in 'Science' only on formal, nomenclatural grounds, offering a thin handful of objections to our choice of name... In his public talks, Richard would only give a sprinkling of statements about afarensis, always unsupported, implying that Tim [White] and I were mistaken, and that more fossils were needed before anything would be further clarified. I felt I was fencing with a phantom." (Pg. 118)

Of an unplanned "debate" he had with Leakey on a Walter Cronkite program, he observed, "As soon as the taping was finished Richard got up and hurriedly left the set. I was told... that he refused to sign a release on his way out, declaring that he would not allow the show to be broadcast. Leakey's lawyers called and threatened to sue if the tape went on the air... When I next saw Richard, he looked right past me. That was four years ago. We haven't spoken since. In public, he has continued to insist that our 'rivalry' is largely the media's creation, and that beneath the hype there lie nothing more than minor professional disagreements. I wish it were that painless." (Pg. 120-121)

He states, "People love to hear about breakthroughs, about sudden transformations in understanding that turn ignorance to knowledge... Science is rarely so dramatic.... I can easily reconstruct the trail of clues that the hominid left for us, and when we came to solve them. It is all duly recorded in my journal. But what the journal lacks is the one entry you would most expect to find" 'Eureka! Today we solved the mystery of the hominid!' That entry isn't there because it didn't happen that way... There was no grand turning point. The evidence kept dribbling in, and through hard labor and some dogged thinking we DID solve the puzzle... though a sort of absorption, just below the level of explicit consciousness." (Pg. 203)

He observes, "From what we can see in the fossil record, by six million years ago most of the dozens of hominid species which once inhabited the rain forest had ... [gone] out of existence... whatever the prime motivation for bipedalism, the fragmentation of this forest gave this novel trait room to establish itself: evolutionary innovation of a small group of prehominids, tucked away out of reach of their four-legged ancestral stock. There is not fossil I would rather find than one plucked from that population of transitional bipeds. But the chances of that wish coming true are vanishingly remote." (Pg. 256)

He cautions, "I have warned against the dangers of drawing conclusions about human origins by thinking backward from modern humans. It would be easy to dismiss this harshly expedient view of the evolution of humanity as just another narrative told with its conclusion already in mind---Raymond Dart's killer ape again, warmed up with some sociological motivation and granted a scheming mind to go with his bone bludgeon." (Pg. 279)

This book goes far beyond Johanson's "Lucy" book, and will be of great interest to anyone studying human evolution.

[Gillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this about 10 years ago and so enjoyed this brief glimpse into our ancestry that when I saw "Born in Africa" at book club this month I took that new title out to read (and loved it).
There are apparently many great books that make the subject of the origins of man a little clearer for us living today. I haven't read any others but can certainly recommend Lucy's Child as easy to read, informative and most worthwhile.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this a while ago and was struck both by the fascinating developing science and the fierce controversies within paleoanthropology in the ongoing development of the origin of modern humans. It is sad when personal differences between field scientists compound the political difficulties of doing long-term work in unstable, war-torn regions. I'm not certain whether the question, "What is a separate species?" has yet been answered for the australopithecines and later homo species.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good antithesis to his first book. There's no "eureka" moment but rather the tedious and repetitive work of an archaeologist.

There's more discussion about the evolution of hominid archaeology than the Homo species.

[Jerry-Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about anthropology, first man, and human ancestors. It also discusses the battles between famous paleoanthropologists such as Tim White, the Leakeys, Donald Johanson, Desmond Clark, Raymond Dart, etc.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as Johanson's Lucy. An OK read, if you are really into paleoanthropology. I'd much rather recommend Lucy for those with even a peripheral interest in the science or the history of discoveries.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting look at archeological digs and the thought processes going into determining what to look for and how to interpret the findings (also looks describes some of the inherent biases in those interpretations).

[Fishercat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers many of the problems involved with the active research on human evolution.

[J. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good portrayal of paleoanthropological reasoning and discovery. Lots of information.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as his others, less content more speculation.

[Dhātturā · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fun. It is an inside look of the world of an archeologist.

[WndyJW · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, of course.