Almost Human

January 30, 2017
Berger, a paleoanthropologist at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, reports on his nearly three decades of work in South Africa—with an excursion to the Micronesian island of Palau—and the surprising discoveries he and colleagues have made about early hominins. In short chapters that feature reconstructed dialogue and somewhat tiresome prose, Berger relates how he used Google Earth as a geological aid to scour the South Africa and uncover natural chambers and new fossil sites. In 2008, his team began excavating one of these sites, a cave outside of Johannesburg, and found two partial skeletons of a woman and child who represented a new species, Australopithecus sediba. Five years later, two cavers discovered another cache of bones. Berger led another team there to find some 1,300 human fossils, including those of a new hominin species, Homo naledi. Berger may have a sharp eye for spotting hominin remains in ancient breccia, but he’s less skilled as a writer and often interrupts his main story with human-interest anecdotes and asides on the history of paleoanthropology. Furthermore, the book’s crucial final chapter remains embargoed until publication. Berger’s finds are certainly interesting, and the H. naledi discovery is potentially groundbreaking, but the book leaves much to be desired.