Happy Hominid

By Peter Stoler

LUCY: THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMANKIND

by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey; Simon & Schuster; 409 pages

Time: Nov. 30, 1974. Scene: the bleached and arid Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. Nothing about the desert seemed auspicious. Yet Anthropologist Donald Johanson had a premonition that this would be no ordinary morning. Shortly afterward, his hunch was ratified. The day was not merely unusual; it was epochal.

After cataloguing some fossils, Johanson introduced a colleague to a section labeled Locality 162. They came across an arm bone, then other parts from the same creature. By happenstance, they had unearthed a find that would alter the accepted view of man's origins.

Most anthropological theory is based upon fragmentary evidence: a femur here, an incisor there. But what Johanson found needed no jigsaw reconstruction. The collection of dozens of bones was literally the skeleton in Homo sapiens' closet. Nicknamed Lucy (because the Beatles' song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing on a tape machine in the expedition's camp), the original owner of the bones was not the most prepossessing of creatures. She stood about 3 1/2 ft. tall and had a head the size of a softball. But despite her size, Lucy turned out to be a colossus. Careful dating of her remains showed that she had antedated Homo sapiens (who appeared 100,000 years ago) by some 3.5 million years. More important, the evidence she left behind showed that she walked on two legs, not on all fours. Lucy clearly was not an ape. And while she might not have been human, she was on her way.

Given this finding, even the most stolid anthropologist could construct a story of suspense and revelation. But Johanson and Co-Author Maitland Edey are no standard scientists. Like polished mystery writers, they trace the many searches for origins and review the rivalries that have driven such scholarly sleuths as Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey. Since Johanson is driven by the same combination of curiosity, daring and egotism, Lucy is both enlivened and marred by a lack of objectivity. Johanson is convinced that he is now in sole possession of the truth about human roots--and perhaps he is.

According to the authors, Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) is important not merely because of her age but because of her posture. Until now, it was believed that humanity's ancestors developed large brains before they walked erect. Lucy shows that it was the other way around.

Why was she vertical? Johanson speculates that it may all have had to do with the family. Upright, females' hands were free to care for infants; males could carry food. The roots of pair bonding were set; the old pattern of annual random coupling was obsolete. This amalgam of nature and nurture brought an endless mating season, happier hominids and, of course, more children--the Darwinian key to survival. Lucy and Co. may have been smaller and weaker than many of the animals they encountered, but when it came to reproducing, they were champions. That, suggest the authors, is why they and their kind prevailed. And it is why their all-too-human descendants are upright citizens today. --By Peter Stoler

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