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“I had a hunting territory in Africa at the bottom of the Olduvai Gorge.”
A month back, I noticed and commented on this BB post. Like other commenters I recognized it from the Life Nature Library (Early Man, to be precise). My primary partner in workcrime has a complete set of the books in his classroom, so I’ve scanned the illustration Mark F referenced and two others I particularly liked. I’m going to leave cleanup and stitching for another day…
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A little chest puffery – my original ID of the antelope as a Topi was dead-on. For an interesting post on early human/hyena conflict by Steve Bodio, click here.
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Jay Matternes’ web site (he did the work above) is here.
Life nature Library Early Man, huh? Know anything about Clark Howell? I love the series and recognized the landscape illos as Matternes instantly as the first came up– was going to ask but you anticipated (;-) I have always liked the whole series but WANT this, for art alone!
Might have to search Asia and Eurasia volumes too…
Still chasing dog evo!
Just grabbed Eurasia. It fell open to a page with pictures of William Beebe and Francis Kingdon-Ward – huzzah!
Hadn’t looked up Howell – now I need to know more.
Eurasia is ordered!
(I take it the first line in the post is OOA, “temporally” adjusted?)
“I take it the first line in the post is OOA, “temporally” adjusted?”
Correct!
Yes! I came on this blog for another reason, and imagine my great astonishment to see this article on the 1968 Early Man, one of the most gorgeous and best-illustrated books of all time, one of the ones that got me into science in the first place. No work ever blew my mind and influenced my development more, except maybe the D’Aulaires’ book of Greek Myths.
The most striking thing about the content of the books was the amusing and presumptuous statement that we were now in a phase of paleoanthropology that was nitpicking, because most of the major mysteries had been solved. I can’t think of a less accurate statement that was ever uttered in the history of science – especially with the collapse of the Savannah model and jaw dropping discoveries like homo floresiensis.
All in all, though, an extraordinary work with extraordinary art that sets the mind on fire.
Esperanto Grrl – happy to provide a little serendipity! I’m not up on current paleoanthropological debates, but I had heard that H. floresiensis was upsetting some applecarts.
My curiosity is piqued – what brought you here?