The Human Lineage

In the field of paleoanthropology there is perhaps no more compelling issue than the origin of the human lineage. From the 19th-Century proclamations of Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel up to the present-day announcements of authorities such as Pilbeam, Johanson, and Leakey, controversy and debate have always surrounded the search for our earliest ancestors. Most authorities now agree that many important questions concerning ape and human ances­ try will be solved by further investigation of the hominoid primates of the Miocene and Pliocene, and through exacting comparative anatomical and biomolecular analyses of their living representatives.