Missing Link : The hunt for earliest man

Ever since Darwin's theory of evolution suggested that humans are descended from an ape-like ancestor, scientists have been searching for the missing link.. In this classical account John Reader tells the story of the hunt for the fossil remains of our earliest ancestors - a story enlivened by fraud, controversy and more than its fair share of English, American and European eccentrics and enthusiasts. (Meanwhile, anti-evolutionists tried to prove there was no such link and that Darwin had got it all wrong). And yet, despite farcical episodes and many false turns, we have been making steady progress in solving a major mystery. Each important fossil we have dug up - from the first Neanderthal of the 1850s, Java Man (1891), Peking Man (1926) and Australopithecus (1925), to Homo habilis (1964) and the supendous finds of the 1970s and 1980s - has added a vital piece to the jigsaw, while developments in molecular biology, radiometric dating and even the saga of the Piltdown fraud (1912) have helped us to set the fossil evidence clearly in the picture of human evolution. Missing Links was acclaimed in its first edition as a superbly comprehensive yet accessible survey;this enlarged second edition brings its coverage of the fast-changing field completely up to date.'He has that rare combination, a seeing eye and a speaking pen,which makes his book a joy to read and to behold. The author's original photographs are beautiful' (The Times).'Fascinating and carefully documented' (Observer).