This book grew out of the bewilderment of one of the authors， w
has no formal training in evolutionary science， at the lack ofrespol
from those who have had such training to the fascinating work
Vificent Sarich and Allan Wilson， of Berkeley in California. and th
colleagues. The work， published in widely read and respecta[
scientific journals such as Nature and Science， is about the origin al
evolution of all living things. That means it is about mankind. [
studying the molecules of life from living species， rather than tl
preserved fossil remains of extinct ones， Sarich and Wilson showe
is long ago as 1967， that our kinship to the African apes is mu~
:loser than any mainstream palaeontologist has ever acknowledgec
Fo an astronomer with an outsider s interest in the subject， th
vidence seemed dramatic and important enough at least to caus
xcited debate among the experts， yet each paper in the journal
eemed to sink with scarcely a ripple of interest. The new picture o
uman origins raised novel and interesting questions， as well a
-*solving old puzzles， and it portrayed an inherently interestin~
abject - ourselves. Yet the palaeo-anthropologists who are sup-
~sed to answer questions about our origins seemed to be ignorin8
te new work. Why?
Because we worked in close proximity - actually on adjacent
~sks - at New Scientist， the baffled astronomer was able to ply a
ologist with a seemingly endless stream of questions. Why did no
e take the molecular evidence seriously? Where was the evidence
it supported the traditional palaeontological picture?Just suppose
.* molecules really were telling the truth: what would the impli-
ions be? The anwers that came back were， initially， less than
isfactory: everyone with any sense knows that the fossil evidence
~ws the molecular studies to be wrong; the fossils prove that man
I the apes diverged from their common stock at least 20 million
rs ago; the implications of taking the molecular evidence at face
ae are absurd . . . Even the biologist began to feel uneasy， and
[er repeated probing his answers became even less satisfactory.
more he looked for incontrovertible arguments to silence his
[O~
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