This student dictionary is derived from the two-volume Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Wood, 2011) (RR 2012/132). The Encyclopedia had 1,264 pages and this new dictionary has as about a quarter of this. To construct the dictionary, terms from the encyclopedia have been selected and rewritten as dictionary size entries. The process of selection and entry writing has been subject to review by student and teachers of human evolution.
The dictionary and the encyclopedia are needed because in recent times, the amount of fossil material available has greatly increased, current analytical techniques have improved and new ones have been developed and there have been advances in topics that impinge on the understanding of fossil material. A major part of the dictionary is the inclusion of Hominid remains by their unique codes, e.g. L. 338y- 6. If the specimen has an informal name like Lucy, they are also included with a cross-reference to the code (in this case AI 288-1). There are descriptions of the various Hominid species and of some nonhuman primates. Piltdown also gets an entry. Animals associated with humans such as horses and rodents are also covered. Find sites are listed and the longitude and latitude are given. (Chinese sites have the name in Chinese characters, which, given the importance of China for animal fossils, both human and much earlier species, is useful.) All the species of the genus Homo have entries. Those for Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens are more than a page long. The author of the species name and the date of publication are given.
Moving beyond the fossil bones, there are entries that deal with paleoanthropology. The entries, pastoralist, grassland and grazing, cover aspects of the economic use of animals. These three entries include quite a lot of information on the interpretation of evidence of this process. Several terms cover aspects of brain anatomy which is used to suggest the level and aspects of possible behavior. Language is covered in four major entries that extend to more than two pages. Art and tool making also get various entries. There are entries on analytical and imaging technologies. Various theories, like the pre-sapiens theory, are given entries. Overall, there are many more topics and entries that I can comment on, but I think I have produced enough “fossil evidence” of my reading to show what there is in the book.
I have three topics on which I would like to say a bit more. The definition of clade and grade are illustrated by the examples of cars. All cars from Rolls-Royce are a clade, but luxury cars made by different manufacturers are a grade. This is a clear and memorable definition. Car manufacturing is somewhat different to evolution. Car manufacturers buy their sparkplugs, upholstery and speedometers from various sources. In evolution, each specific feature is evolved as part of the organism. So, the analogy is wrong but actually makes the distinction between clade and grade quite clear. Race is briefly discussed, and it is suggested that it should not be a term used for modern humans; a point which I fully agree with. In forensic science, where I worked for some years, the term is still in used for the phenotypic skin color. Ethnicity is used for how people define themselves. The term ethnicity is not included in the dictionary, perhaps it will be in the next edition. The term race is required to discuss the now discredited theories of racial differences and racial hierarchies which were still current when I started reading about human evolution back in the sixties. Lactose persistence is described as the persistence of the ability after weaning which allows people to continue to digest milk. I continued to drink milk after I was weaned. In my mid-thirties, my fridge broke down and I did not replace it immediately; but I gave up drinking milk because I could not keep it fresh. Some months later, I drank some milk with all the consequences mentioned in the entry. This suggests that it is the continued drinking of milk that keeps the gene working. People who exploited mammals originally did so for meat and only later as the human groups got bigger, did they switch to keeping animals for milk, if they had a suitable species that could be domesticated. The change from meat to milk can be detected in the size of the bones of animals from archeological sites, and from traces of meat or milk foods from cooking pots. Before the domestication of mammals for milk, all humans would have lost the lactose activity at weaning.
So, I have had my say, which proves I found the book interesting and informative. There is a lot of information in it and the topics are well-described. As the title makes explicit, it is aimed at students, but it would be of use to anyone with more than a passing interest in human evolution. Even the expert might find it useful for the listing of fossils and sites. There is now a cheaper paperback version of the Encyclopedia; perhaps, there will soon be a paper version of this Dictionary offshoot.
