Origins Reconsidered

Famed paleoanthropologist Leakey begins this first-person odyssey with an informal account of his 1984 discovery in East Africa of the ``Turkana boy,'' a 1.5-million-year-old Homo erectus skeleton. Teamed with science writer Lewin (with whom he wrote Origins and People of the Lake ), Leakey controversially portrays this forerunner of Homo sapiens as a meat-eating omnivore who operated from a home base and was already to some degree human in behavior. Full of tantalizing insights into human origins, this exciting inquiry suggests that morality, consciousness and emotions developed over a much longer period of our history than many scientists assume. Modern humans' language abilities are firmly rooted in the cognitive abilities of ape brains, Leakey asserts. Skeptical of the multiregional model, which holds that the first humans arose simultaneoulsy in Asia, Africa and Europe, Leakey leans toward the ``Noah's Ark hypothesis,'' which asserts that Homo sapiens originated in a single, localized evolutionary event. In conclusion, he eloquently warns that our unruly species may be short-term tenants on earth unless we become the planet's stewards. (Oct.)