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The second part of the book opens at that primordial frontier and moves forward along the trail of discoveries leading to the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, and its gradual migration around the world. What stands out is not only the remarkable range of scientific discoveries that have been made but the extent of the vast hinterland that remains to be discovered.

Introduction

While working on his revolutionary theories about evolution, the naturalist Charles Darwin concluded that the most likely birthplace of humankind was Africa, since it was the homeland of gorillas and chimpanzees, apes which he deemed to be our closest living relatives. Humans and apes, said Darwin, had probably shared a common ancestor in Africa.

‘In each great region of the world’, he wrote in The Descent of Man, published in 1871, ‘the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere’.

The idea that humans were related to an African ape caused uproar in Victorian England. ‘Descended from the apes!’ exclaimed a bishop’s wife to her husband. ‘My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is let us pray that it will not become generally known’.

The Victorian era was accustomed to Christian doctrines about life on earth that regarded humans as unique, a special creation separate from the rest of the animal world, made in the image of God and given dominion over nature. What the public found so offensive was not the general theory of evolution that Darwin propounded. Geologists had already shown that the earth was far older than allowed for in the Book of Genesis and that it had changed significantly over a vast period of time. Archaeologists had found stone tools alongside extinct animals from the Ice Ages indicating that humans, too, had been on earth for far longer than the 6,000 years laid down by biblical chronology.

Victorian society was ready to accept the idea of a changing world. Evolution could be seen as the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. It represented progress—the constant improvement of form and function—a subject of immense appeal to Victorian audiences. Humans, standing atop the ladder of evolution, were clearly life’s supreme refinement. Indeed, evolution, it was said, had been planned by a wise and benevolent God to result in human life. Darwin’s theory of common descent—the proposition that all living things were descended from a common ancestry—was swiftly accepted.

Other aspects of Darwin’s explanations about life on earth, however, caused endless trouble, not only with the public but among the scientific community. Evolution, Darwin maintained, did not rely on any supernatural power. It was governed solely by the response of a species to its physical and biological environment. Every species produced more offspring than could survive from generation to generation. In ‘the struggle for existence’, said Darwin, it was those individuals best able to adapt to the demands of the prevailing environment—‘the fittest’—that would survive. The traits or variations that enabled them to adapt would be more prevalent in the next generation. Adaptation was thus the driving force behind evolution. By a process of natural selection, the less fit were eliminated. ‘Common descent with modification’ was the framework for understanding the history of life. Over an immense period of time, infinitesimal changes wrought by the struggle for survival had led to the evolution of species. This process of natural selection applied to all life on earth—including humans. Darwin treated humankind as just one species among all others, moulded by the same evolutionary forces.

The implications of Darwin’s theory were profound. It opened up the possibility of a world without purpose,