BOOK REVIEWS 97

represents an outgrowth of his undergraduate course on vertebrate morphology and

evolutionary history at the University of Chicago. Although simplification of detailed and

complex material for undergraduate textbooks often results in inaccuracies and

obfuscation Radinsky’s skill as a teacher and writer shines through and these problems arc

avoided almost completely.

Following introductory chapters on the fossil record, evolutionary principles, and the

basic vertebrate body plan, The Evolution of Vertebrate Design describes in easily readable and

understandable style the changes in vertebrate anatomy from the earliest jawless forms

(ostracoderms) through mammals. The relationships among and within most of the major

groups of vertebrates (all except mammals) are clearly depicted in four cladograms that

provide the background information necessary for providing functional interpretations of

morphological transformations. Three of the additional 15 short chapters, each of which

are from 5 to 13 pages long and which were presumably designed as single lectures, arc

devoted to mammals. The first of these focuses on origins, the second on morphological

diversity and function, and the third on taxonomic diversity.. This final chapter

concentrates heavily on the evolutionary radiation of primates, but even so only three and

one-half pages of text are given to the subject. Perhaps the greatest utility of The Evolution q/‘

Vertebrate Design for physical anthropologists, however, is for those who have had onI>.

limited exposure to comparative vertebrate biology and who therefore have not had the

opportunity to place primates in the broader context ofvertebratc history. For this group of

students, Radinsky’s book provides excellent and easily affordable remedial reading. ‘l’hc

text is complemented by well-designed and helpful illustrations, a short glossary. a section

on suggested additional readings, and a comprchcnsivc and useful index.

DAVID th:. I~RXUSE

Department of.Jnatomical Sciences,

&State C~niversit_v of ,1’ew York,

#Story Brook, Neie, York 11794-8081. C:.S.,l.

Theories of Human Evolution: A Century of Debate, 1844-1944

By Peter J. Bowler (1986). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. xv + 318 pp. $32.50. ISBX

O-801 8-3258-6.

One can only hope that Peter Bowler’s Theories of Human Evolution may mark the beginning

of an era of scholarly introspection and retrospection in the study of human origins. Bowler

is an historian of science at Queen’s University, Belfast, and has done physical

anthropologists a great service in producing the first critical, historical analysis focused on

the study of human evolution.

Bowler’s work overlaps some issues addressed in Frank Spencer’s edited volume of 1982,

but that volume dealt only with American work, dealt with broader areas within physical

anthropology, and concentrated upon a later period. Similarly, there is overlap with Roger

Lewin’s (1987) historical book on paleoanthropology-but Bowler’s is a work of more

serious erudition.

98 BOOK REVIEWS

The bracketing dates in Bowler’s subtitle mark the publication of Kobcrt Chambers’

(anonymous) Vestiges of the Natural Histoy of Creation and George Gaylord Simpson’s Tempo

and Mode in Evolution. These fix the approximate lifespan of orthogcnctic explanation in

“mainstream” evolutionary theory, where orthogenesis refers to the evolution ofspecies in

a particular direction based on internal organismal mechanisms or drives, and not on

adaptive genetic responses of populations to environmental exigencies. This is a

non-Darwinian explanation, and leads Bowler to explore the non-Darwinian approach to

human evolution as a special case of such approaches in turn-of-the-century evolutionary

biology, with which he dealt in an earlier work, The Eclipse of Dawinism ( 1983).

Though the book is only minimally illustrated, and Bowler’s prose is somewhat lifeless,

the documentation and analysis arc high-grade, and the work is, at the risk of sounding

trite, a must-read for the clientele of JHE. One learns at the outset what one is in for, as

Bowler takes a half-page prefatory note to explain his basis for entering Sir W’ilfrid E. Lc

Gros Clark bibliographically under “Clark,” rather than under “Le”. ‘I’hc more

substantive points in the book indeed seem to have been treated with proportional care.

(Carleton Coon has lost the “c” in his first name, but that is the only misspelling I

encountered in the entire work.)

Bowler finds utility in Misia Landau’s and Matt Cartmill’s views on paleoanthropology

as narrative, but refreshingly trcates the idea critically and broadly.

.2 possible objection to Landau’s thesis is that the narrative style of explanation is by no means confined to the field of human origins. If one were to ask about the origin of the horse, or the origin of the mammals, one would expect to get the same kind of answer [p. 1 I]

Amen. And Bowler further argues that the “narrative” explanation breaks down since the

mechanistic aspects of these theories were often intimately tied into historical scenarios.

Thus,

To analyze [Sir Grafton] Elliot Smith’s theory in terms of narrative structure alone, even with the evolutionary trend playing a role in the narrative, is to present a one-sided image of a theory in w-hich the narrative and deterministic modes of explanation were interwoven in equal parts [p. 1891.

Bowler’s nine chapters begin with “The Evidence of Human Antiquity”, which owes an

acknowledged debt to Donald Grayson’s 1983 book, and “The Framework of Debate”,

which lays out the relevant ideas ofbiological and cultural evolution. He then presents four

chapters on phylogeny, which subsume everything from Hrdlitka on the Neanderthals to

Wood Jones on the tars&s, and Hermann Klaatsch’s phylogenetic association of Asian

people with orang utans and African people with gorillas. The final three chapters are

primarily analytical and topic-oriented, dealing with the primacy of the brain over the foot

in human evolution, the influence of cultural values on evolutionary scenarios, and the

burning question of Asian vs. African origins (“Is there a thing whereof it is said: ‘See, this

is new’?-it hath been already, in the ages which were before us.“---Ecclesiastes I: 10).

There are two points that require observation. The first is Bowler’s excellent treatment

of the Asia-Africa question as it was debated early in the century. There has recently

emerged a somewhat facile tendency to equate the following ideas as part of a general

explanatory framework for paleoanthropology in the 1920s: acceptance of Piltdown,

rejection ofTaung, Asian origin ofhumans. and racism (Gould, 1984; Lewin, 1987). While

this may help explain some aspects of some people’s thinking, it is excessively

Osbornocentric. Elliot Smith, for example, could and did come up with some excellent

BOOK REVIEWS 99

racist reasons for an African origin, and was excoriated on that basis by Lull ( 1928), the

Asianist. Peter Bowler, I am pleased to note, teases apart Piltdown and Taung (“. . . it has

been widely supposed that the misinterpretation promoted by the Piltdown fraud was

responsible for delaying recognition of the importance of Australopithecus’s. In fact, . . . the

situation was far more complex” [p.39]). F ur th er, he discusses the Africa-Asia controversy

on its own contemporary scientific merits, and accuses nobody of taking sides on account of

being a racist.

I will take exception, howcvcr, to Bowler’s association of Earnest Hooton with the

polyphyletic fantasies of Klaatsch and of R. Ruggles Gates. Klaatsch’s name appears in

neither edition of up From the Ape (Hooton, 193 1, 1946), and one really has to flog Hooton’s

work to extract a connection between the two. The connection between Gates and Hooton

is more apparent, though equally spurious. Gates’s 1948 Human Ancestry argued for

separate species status of the various human groups, and actually included a foreword by

Hooton. Yet Hooton’s foreword was extremely coy:

The question of the unity or diversity of species in modern man has unfortunate political

implications in which the physical anthropologist usually does not wish to involve himself.

Professor Ruggles Gates does not subscribe to the dogma that all races ofmodern man belong to

the same species However, I am glad to see Professor Gates tackle the problem so

courageously, even if I myself am indifferent. hesitant. or pusillanimous.

Of course I do not agree with all the interpretations of the studies offossil and contemporary

man that are offered by Professor Gates. So I would not urge upon the reader of this useful

Ijook, Human iincesty, that he accept its contents as eternal \,erities.

Privately, Hooton did not cvrn rccommcnd the book to Robert Yerkes, who had written to

inquire about it:

I do not think his book is first rate and ifyou read my introduction to it. which I was obliged to

write because I am friendly with Gates, you will see that I give it some thing [sic] less than full

endorsement (Hooton, 1949).

The most telling blow, however, is that when Hooton’s protege Coon revived polyphyly

in 1962, he explicitly paid his intellectual debt not to Hooton, but rather to Franz

Weidenreich. All this is not to argue that Hooton was an angel, or that hc had successfully

transcended the racism of his times *, but only that the charge of an intellectual link

brtwcen Hooton on the one hand and Gates and Klaatsch on the other will not stick. Gates,

incidentally, does cite Klaatsch, and unfavorably.

If this review has taken a turn for the esoteric, it is only because the level ofscholarship in

Bowler’s book is so high. I hope that Theories of Human Eaolution will be read as a welcome

first step in the critical scholarly history of palroanthropology. There is still much fertile

intellectual ground to plow, and much to re-plow. For the time being, I will be adopting

Bowler’s book for a seminar next semester. Could one make a stronger endorsement?

JON MARKS

Department oj‘dnthropology,

Yale Chivers$v,

;Verel Haven, CT 063~0 1 7.S..4.

*In all 18irness, the next line Hooton wmtc to E’erkes should also hr quoted: “However, it is not as had as those

who curry tu the popular prejudices about the lack of racial diffewncrs make out.”

100 BOOli REVIEWS

References

Bowler, P. W. (1983). The Eclipse ofDanuinism. Baltimore: ,Johns Hopkins Coon, C. S. (1962). The Origin of Races. New York: Knopf. Gates, R. R. (1948). Human Ancestry. Cambridge: Harvard. Gould, S. J. (1984). Human equality is a con&gent fact of history. .%‘ut. Hist. 93( 11). 2&33 Gravson, D. K. (1983). The Establishment ofHuman Antiouitv. New York: Academic. Hodton, E. A. (193 I).’ ~I/I From the Ape. N& York: MacMillan. Hooton, E. A. (1946). up From the Ape, 2nd rd. New York: Macmillan. Hooton, E. A. (1949). Letter to R. M. Yerkes, dated,July 12. 1949. Robert Mearns Yerkes Archives, Sterling

Library, Yale University. Lewin, R. (1987). Bones ofContenlion. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lull, R. S. (1928). Connecting and missing links in the ascent to man. In (F. Mason, Ed.) C’reation B-7 Evolution,

pp. 255-269. New York: Macmillan. Spencer, F. (Ed.) (1982). The History oj‘American P/q&d Anthropology, 193C1980. New York: Academic.

Teeth (Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology)

By Simon Hillson (1986). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 376 pp. E27.50 (cloth).

ISBN o-521-30405-9.

Books on teeth abound, and there are numerous archaeological reference manuals to aid in

fauna1 identification. However, Hillson’s Teeth, published as one of the Cambridge

Manuals in Archaeology, admirably fills a void that exists despite the number of dental

and identification volumes that are available. Hillson has produced a volume that

excellently serves the needs of archaeologists-and students-who wish to interpret dental

remains. The very nature of the volume demands that it cover a vast field of information

(and taxa); thus, it will be possible for those with expertise in a given area (e.g., primate

dentition, enamel structure, dental anthropology) to find that greater detail or elaboration

could have been provided in that particular area. Such quibbles, however, are rather lame

when the breadth, level and accuracy of coverage provided by Hillson are considered.

Teeth consists of a short introduction, five sections devoted to (I) Tooth Form, (II)

Dental Microstructure, (III) Ageing, (IV) Dental Size and Shape, and (V) Dental

Disease, and four Appendices that deal with ageing specimens on the basis of dentine

translucency (Appendix A) and crown wear (Appendices B-D).

The first section, on Tooth Form, contains a brief discussion of dental terminology and

function that serves as background for some 100 succeeding pages that are dedicated to a

presentation of the dental characteristics ofa wide variety ofmammalian orders that might

be encountered in an archaeological context. The dental characteristics of taxa within a

given order are discussed at the familial level, with representative genera illustrated. The

illustrations, oblique line drawings of the upper and lower dentitions;clearly present the

principal morphological characteristics of each taxon, and they are grouped for easy

comparisons among closely related taxa.

The discussion of primates is limited to a treatment of Homo, Macaca and Papio; this

limitation is quite understandable given that other primate taxa figure less commonly in

archaeological contexts.

The second section, on dental microstructure, concentrates on incremental phenomena

that are useful for ontogenetic age determination, and on enamel features that are useful for

purposes of taxonomic identification (especially among rodents). It also contains a short

subsection on preparation techniques that can be employed in studies of dentine and