Their conclusions are therefore often fresh and surprising. Human evolution, say the authors, has long been envisioned as a straight-line progression from bipedal apes to Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Neanderthals to us, Homo sapiens . But this model of a single species at a time is suspiciously unlike the pattern of multiple branchings and extinctions known for all other animals. Rejecting preconceived models of evolution, Tattersall and Schwartz look anew to the actual fossils themselves. The story they tell is one of great variation, repeated new species and extinction, experimentation and failure, played out over the millions of years of human history.
Human history looks less like the steps on a ladder than it does like the branches of a bushy tree.
Extinct Humans recounts the ongoing vigorous debates over the identity of the earliest of our human ancestors. It considers how our vanished remote ancestors differed from us. Extinct Humans contains over 150 illustrations, maps, and diagrams, most of them in full color. Many of the photographs were taken by the authors themselves as part of their extensive reexamination of human fossils around the world. The scenario of the slow, single-minded transformation of the bent and benighted caveman into the graceful and gifted modern Homo sapiens proved powerfully seductive as fables of frogs becoming princes always are.