Accidental Species
Misunderstandings of Human Evolution
The idea of a missing link between humanity and our animal ancestors predates evolution and popular science and actually has religious roots in the deist concept of the Great Chain of Being. Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being "animal" and started being "human". In "The Accidental Species", Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe.
Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world – they are not, indeed, unique to our species.
"The Accidental Species" combines Gee's firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution – the key is not what's missing, but how we're linked.
About the Author
Henry Gee is a senior editor at Nature and the author of such books as "Jacob's Ladder", "In Search of Deep Time", "The Science of Middle-Earth", and "A Field Guide to Dinosaurs", the last with Luis V. Rey.
Reviews
"Henry Gee, paleontology editor at Nature, confronts two commonly held views of evolution and effectively demolishes both, persuasively arguing that evolution doesn't work the way most people believe it does and that the entire concept of 'human exceptionalism' (the idea that humans are fundamentally superior to other animals due to 'language, technology, or consciousness') is erroneous... He buttresses these points with an impressive and accessible overview of the pattern of human evolution, showing just how little we actually know and arguing that different evolutionary stories could likely fit the extant data" – Publishers Weekly
"If you only read one book on evolution this year, make it this one. You will be dethroned. But you won't be disappointed" – Geoscientist
"'The Accidental Species' is an excellent guide to our current knowledge of how we got where we are... Highly recommended" – BBC Focus
"Gee sets out vehemently to dispute our common tendency to see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, the bold, brilliant branch that is the final growth of the evolutionary tree of life... a thought-provoking and challenging book" – Library Journal
"With a delightfully irascible sense of humor, Henry Gee reflects on our origin and all the misunderstanding that we impose on it. 'The Accidental Species' is an excellent primer on how – and how not – to think about human evolution" – Carl Zimmer, author of "A Planet of Viruses"
"'The Accidental Species' is at once an eminently readable and important book. For almost three decades Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature, has helped bring some of the most important discoveries in paleontology to the scientific community and the public at large. Employing years of experience, sharp wit, and great erudition, Gee reveals how most of our popular conceptions of evolution are wrong. Gee delights in shedding us of our assumptions to reveal how science has the power to inform, enlighten, and ultimately surprise" – Neil Shubin, author of "Your Inner Fish"
"Quite simply, the best book ever written about the fossil record and humankind's place in evolution" – John Gribbin, author of "Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique"
"If you only read one book on human evolution, or indeed one book on evolution, make it this one" – Ted Nield, author of "Incoming and Supercontinent"
