Roger Lewin

Garniss H. Curtis

Carl Celso Swisher

A scientific narrative of a landmark discovery, involving the fascinating adventure of the Dutch physician Eugene Dubois and his search for early humans in Java in the East Indies a century ago. There he uncovered the first fossils of our immediate ancestor, Homo erectus. A century later, the authors brought the power of the most sensitive radiosotopic dating technique to Homo erectus fossils from the same island where Dubois toiled so diligently. Their true age is almost two million years old, a million years older than anthropological theory has held, and the implications are profound. Not only does it mean that Homo erectus left Africa almost a million years earlier than was believed, indicating that it was a very different kind of animal than we thought; it also tells us that our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved rapidly and recently, in Africa. This solves anthropology's most contentious and rancorous debate, that of the origin of modern humans and the fate of the Neanderthals.

How Two Geologists' Dramatic Discoveries Changed Our Understanding of the Evolutionary Path to Modern Humans

Java Man

Carl C. Swisher III

"'Garniss, lend me your knife for a second, will you,' I whispered." So begins Java Man, the inside story of how one discovery—a human skull found on the island of Java—by two geologists shook the foundations of science. By uncovering new evidence about the hominid known as Java man, Carl C. Swisher and Garniss H. Curtis were able to date his fossil remains at 1.7 million years, an age that stunned the scientific community because it pushed back the time when humans migrating out of Africa first reached Eurasia by nearly one million years. Cowritten by the popular science writer Roger Lewin, this is a gripping and informative account of the discovery that breathed new life into the human origins debate. Originally published by Scribner 2000 ISBN: 0-684-80000-4

Garniss H. Curtis

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