Not wonderful. Part of it was that there have been a lot of developments since the book was written, but his obsession with refuting the "killer ape" theory rather warped what was presented, as well. It began with an interesting discussion of the finds( and the findings) at his fossil-hunting site at Lake Turkana, and went on to give something of an overview of (then-current) views of the evolution of humans and the fossils on which those views are based. Both of these were frequently interrupted by a paragraph or so about how the killer ape theory uses these facts as support but really they mean.... Then he got grander, and started discussing how culture, language, and intelligence developed - which one created the others, how they built on each other, how they made humans unique (and yes, he discussed Koko and the chimps using sign language - there was a chapter about how humans kept looking for distinct markers and finding animals that shared them). But again, the slant was "but despite/because of these things, the view of humans as naturally murderous is way off..." It got quite dull, actually. An interesting theory about the relative power of men and women in society being based on meat, the province of male hunters, being perceived as the high-status food, while plant materials despite being the majority of the diet of hunter-gatherers (or as he says it, gatherer-hunters) are low-status and associated with women. Which only pushes the problem back a step, why is meat high-status? Anyway. It wasn't really worth my time to read this; I didn't learn anything particularly useful (as I'm not very interested in Richard Leakey's opinions), and I was frequently annoyed. Ah well, done and now I can get rid of it. ( )

This was published in 1978 and obviously there have been more discoveries and methods of investigating the history of mankind since then. Despite that I think that this is still a very readable hypothesis about the beginnings of homo sapiens.

Covering both Richard Leakey's archaeological dig at Lake Turkana and a study of how man might have developed. This also looks at other primates and how society could have evolved -community, diet, language and relationships are all discussed.

There is an index and there are a couple of maps for the sites of fossil remains and some black and white photos of Richard Leakey and his work at Lake Turkana. Unfortunately there is no bibliography or further reading suggestions. ( )