The First Human

The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors

By: Ann Gibbons

Narrated by: Renee Raudman

This dynamic chronicle of the race to find the "missing links" between humans and apes transports readers into the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind.

The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits. The First Human is the story of four international teams obsessed with solving the mystery of human evolution and of the intense rivalries that propel them.

An award-winning science writer, Ann Gibbons introduces the various maverick fossil hunters and describes their most significant discoveries in Africa. There is Tim White, the irreverent and brilliant Californian whose team discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived more than 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. If White can prove that it was hominid, an ancestor of humans and not of chimpanzees or other great apes, he can lay claim to discovering the oldest known member of the human family. As White painstakingly prepares the bones, the French paleontologist Michel Brunet comes forth with another, even more startling find. Well known for his work in the most remote and hostile locations, Brunet and his team uncover a stunning skull in Chad that could set the date of the beginnings of humankind to almost seven million years ago.

Two other groups, one led by the zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by the British geologist Martin Pickford and his partner, Brigitte Senut, a French paleontologist, enter the race with landmark discoveries of other fossils vying for the status of the first human ancestor.

Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human takes listeners behind the scenes to reveal the intense challenges of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

©2006 Ann Gibbons (P)2006 Tantor Media Inc

Critic reviews

"A deft account, part detective story, part adventure tale, of recent breakthroughs in the search for human origins." (Kirkus)

An interesting look at the politics of discovery

This was a really interesting book for those interested in paleoanthropology! It is focused on the discoverers rather than the discoveries themselves, so it reads a little bit like a gossip column at times. Lots of fun, for those interested in the science.

Since the pace of paleoanthropological discovery seems to be speeding up, this book is already slightly out of date (it was published in 2006). It remains useful.

The narrator is fine, but she constantly mispronounces words. Mispronunciations of foreign words would be excusable (and there is a little of that). The real problem is incorrect stressing of words (e.g. "permit" the noun pronounced as "permit" the verb, etc.). This makes it sound like the narrator has no idea what she's reading.

Naughty Boys Fossil Finders

Fossil hunters look for archaic humans. Some finds are debatable: is it chimp/ape or the first creature on the trail to Brad Pitt. What's not debatable is the upright bipedal fossil freaks are entirely HUMAN. They seek glory and gratitude, prizes and praise. They play the game and crave the thrill of victory and don't care who suffers the agony of defeat. HUMANS. Yes, HUMANS.

Narrator is really awful

I'm going to have to stop listening to this. The narrator keeps pronouncing Meave Leakey's name wrong and it's driving me crazy. It's not MAYVE, it's pronounced MEEVE. If it was spelled Maeve, she'd be right. Did no one tell her this? Also, she's narrating like she's talking to a kindergarten class, not adults who have some familiarity with the subject. The book is very superficial so far and the author is having a love-fest with Tim White. I admire him and his work, but am not in love with him. Book is not for me.

Good Content, Bad Narration

Gibbons covers her topic thoroughly and weaves together the complete story so that it keeps the listener's attention throughout. I agree with Michael from Baltimore's review that the tensions among paleanthropologists is one of the fascinating aspects of the whole story.

However, be advised that the narration has problems. This production needed much better editorial oversight. Raudman's peculiar inflections frequently over-emphasize a word, disrupting the flow. She sometimes sounded as though she were reading a children's story. Raudman also mis-pronounces various words: Oligocene (ollie GOH seen?), Poitiers, and many other words throughout. The result for me was that at certain moments, I had to mentally replay sentences in order to repair the author's original meaning. The issue is actually not a problem of having a bad narrator. Rather, it shows that the producers of the audio program did not pay sufficient attention to editorial detail--certainly not to the level warranted by the author's effort to produce an excellent popular science narrative.

Science writing at its very best

Wow. Someone once said to me, “If you can’t do the job without being a jerk, then you can’t do the job.” Ann Gibbons clearly spells out for us, the uninitiated, this: there are some serious jerks in paleoanthropology. Without naming names, let's just say that the quality of the insulting hyperbolic nutty criticisms and analogies documented here is only slightly superior to what you might find exchanged among some affluent US middle school students. So, do jerks help or inhibit science? Or, how much of a jerk do you have to be to be a successful paleoanthropologist? How does being a jerk help you find hominid fossils? Surprisingly, answers to these apparently ridiculous questions begin to reveal themselves as you listen. In all seriousness, this is an exciting book about an exciting time that is happening right now. I did not want the book to end, but when it did, I realized that it ended exactly in the present, and I was in the thick of it. Now I feel like I am part of this exciting, unprecedented, lucky, agonizing, contentious, rush to find where we came from. It really is that good. MB

Worth Reading

Excellent The most up to date book I have read. It delves into the good bad and ugly of science.

Interesting subject, poor execution

I'm interested in paleoanthropology, and the story of the discovery of the first hominids is a compelling one.

Unfortunately, Ann Gibbons doesn't tell the story all that well. There are a few too many characters in this story, and Gibbons seems to feel like she needs to give a mini-bio for everyone she introduces. This doesn't work because sometimes the profiles are longer than the part in the story the character plays. Very annoying. Gibbons also tries overly hard to bring the reader into the story, i.e. to take the reader there, with some pretty silly examples. This is not great science writing.

However, what's really bad is the narration. Rodman reads the book like she's reading a story to a Kindergarten class, complete with excitement in her voice at all the wrong parts. I would probably be able to recommend this book had the narration been better, but as it was I couldn't wait to finish with it because the reading was so grating.

Worst narration ever

In four years of listening, I have never written a review on Audible. Experience listening has also taught me that I am almost never bothered by narrators in the way many folks are. But the narrator on this is just abysmal-- with few exceptions, she pronounces almost every, single scientific word incorrectly. Since I am an anthropologist myself, it grated so hard on the ears I gave up and just read the book. I’m mostly concerned about listeners interested in paleoanthropology with no formal educational background in it. I can just see Audible listeners dropping references to “Homo hab-i-lee” at their cocktail parties (the “s” on the end of Homo habilis is not silent, Ms. Raudman). Ugh.

disappointing

The book lacked substance and the narrating was horrible. There was more information about the anthropologists personal lives than facts about the history and lineage of man. I couldn't get through the book let alone enjoy it. very disappointing.

An insider book

What would have made The First Human better?

Less mundane detail about the paleoanthropologists. The story lacked any interesting information for those not immersed in the field.

What was most disappointing about Ann Gibbons’s story?

It was boring. The topic is very interesting but this story was as uninteresting as a book about the lives of random office workers, accountants or other ordinary people. I was expecting more on the topic rather than the paleoanthropologists.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narration style was similar to those used by NPR correspondents. A quiet whispery voice that tended to drone on when you have a long narration. With the less than exciting story, the soft narration style contributed to nodding off.

What character would you cut from The First Human?

There were no characters to cut from this type of book.

Any additional comments?

Serious paleoanthropology students or researchers probably would enjoy the book. That is why I called it an "Insider's Book".