In southern Greece in 1944, German forces constructing a wartime bunker reportedly unearthed a single mandible that paleontologist Bruno von Freyberg 
In Ancient Bones: Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human, Böhme—with coauthors Rüdiger Braun and Florian Breier—advances this North Side Story with a vengeance, scorning the naysayers and intimating the presence of some wider conspiracy in the paleontological community to suppress findings that dispute the status quo. Böhme brings other ammunition to the table, including the so-called “Trachilos footprints,” the 5.7-million-year-old potentially hominin footprints found on Crete, which—if fully substantiated—would make these more than 2.5 million years earlier than the footprints of Australopithecus afarensis found in Tanzania. Perhaps these were made by El Graeco?! And then there’s Böhme’s own discovery of the 11.6-million-year-old Danuvius guggenmosi, an extinct species of great ape she uncovered near the town of Pforzen in southern Germany, which according to the author revolutionizes the origins of bipedalism. Throughout, she positions herself as the lonely voice in the wilderness shouting truth to power.
I lack the scientific credentials to quarrel with Böhme’s assertions, but I have studied paleoanthropology as a layman long enough to both follow her arguments and to understand why accepted authorities would be reluctant to embrace her somewhat outrageous claims that are after all based on rather thin evidence. But for the uninitiated, some background to this discussion is in order:
While human evolution is in itself not controversial (for scientists, at least; Christian evangelicals are another story), the theoretical process of how we ended up as Homo sapiens sapiens, the only living members of genus Homo, based upon both molecular biology and fossil evidence, has long been open to spirited debate in the field, especially because new fossil finds occur with some frequency and the rules of somewhat secretive peer-reviewed scholarship that lead to publication in scientific journals often delays what should otherwise be breaking news.
Paleontologists have long been known to disagree vociferously with one other, sometimes spawning feuds that erupt in the public arena, such as the famous one in the 1970s between the esteemed, pedigreed Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson over Johanson’s discovery and identification of the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecine “Lucy,” which was eventually accepted by the scientific community over Leakey’s objections. At one time, it was said that all hominin fossils could be placed on one single, large table. Now there are far more than that: Homo, Australopithecine, and many that defy simple categorization. Also at one time human evolution was envisioned as a direct progression from primitive to sophistication, but today it is accepted that rather than a “tree” our own evolution can best be imagined as a bush, with many relatives—and many of those relatives not on a direct path to the humans that walk the earth today.
Another controversary has been between those who favored an “Out-of-Africa” origin for humanity, and those who advanced what used to be called the multi-regional hypothesis. Since all living Homo sapiens sapiens are very, very closely related to each other—even more closely related than chimpanzees that live in different parts of Africa today—multiregionalism smacked a bit of the illogical and has largely fallen out of favor. The scholarly consensus that Böhme takes head on is that humans can clearly trace their ancestry back to Africa. Another point that should be made is that there are loud voices of white supremacist “race science” proponents outside of the scientific community whom without any substantiation vehemently oppose the “Out-of-Africa” origin theory for racist political purposes, as underscored in Angela Saini’s brilliant recent book, Superior: The Return of Race Science. This is not to suggest that Böhme is racist nor that her motives should be suspect—there is zero evidence that is the case—but the reader must be aware of the greater “noise” that circulates around this topic.
My most pointed criticism of Ancient Bones is that it is highly disorganized, meandering between science and polemic and unexpected later chapters that read like a college textbook on human evolution. It is often hard to know what to make of it. And it’s difficult for me to accept that there is a larger conspiracy in the paleoanthropological community to preserve “Out-of-Africa” against better evidence that few beyond Böhme and her allies have turned up. The author also makes a great deal of identifying singular features in both El Graeco and Danuvius that she insists must establish that her hypotheses are the only correct ones, but as those who are familiar with the work of noted paleoanthropologists John Hawks and Lee Berger are well aware, mosaics—primitive and more advanced characteristics occurring in the same hominin—are far more common than once suspected and thus should give pause to those tempted to conclusions that actual evidence does not unambiguously support.
As noted earlier, I am not a paleontologist or even a scientist, and thus I am far from qualified to peer-review Böhme’s arguments or pronounce judgment on her work. But as a layman with some familiarity with the current scholarship, I remain unconvinced. She also left me uncomfortable with what appears to be a lack of respect for rival ideas and for those who fail to find concordance with her conclusions. More significantly, her book is poorly edited and too often lacks focus. Still, for those like myself who want to stay current with the latest twists-and-turns in the ever-developing story of human evolution, at least some portions of Ancient Bones might be worth a read.
[Note: I read an Advance Reader’s Copy (ARC) of this book obtained through an early reviewer’s group.]
[Note: I reviewed Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini, here: Review of: Superior: The Return of Race Science, by Angela Saini]
[Note: I reviewed Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery that Changed Our Human Story,” by Lee Berger and John Hawks here: Review of: Almost Human: The Astonishing Tale of Homo naledi and the Discovery that Changed Our Human Story, by Lee Berger and John Hawks]
I’ve just completed _Ancient Bones_ by Dr Bohme et al. and, as a laywoman (a scientist but in psychological science), I have to say I did not find the disrespect and disregard for other scientists’ work that you perceived. As when reading any work that differs from the current mainstream, I did listen carefully for any of that tone, of the “here’s what they want you to think” variety, and did not find it. There was the account of the missing thigh bone and the firing of the grad student who had started to reveal it, but these things do happen in the world of real life scientists when their egos dominate and ethics are bent. Seemed plausible to this reader. I’m more interested in what your review may tell us about you. Scientists argue ALL the TIME; honest arguments are the drivers of the scientific process. You don’t think Louis Leakey didn’t argue vociferously in favor of all his interpretations of his (wife and teams’) discovered bones and footprints? He did. But I wonder if you react to his forceful arguments with the same attitude as you bring to the review of this book by Dr Bohme and _her_ colleagues?
Thank you for your comments. You are of course welcome to disagree with my review and my conclusions regarding Ancient Bones. You mention Louis and Mary Leakey in your comments, but you seem to overlook the fact that in the review I made a point of referencing the famous fossil feud between their son, Richard Leakey, and Don Johanson, and I specifically noted that “Paleontologists have long been known to disagree vociferously with one other, sometimes spawning feuds that erupt in the public arena.”
You apparently did not catch the whiff of the paleontological community conspiracy suspicions that I caught between the lines in Böhme’s text. I’m not about to go through the book line by line again now, but I do recall two salient examples of this. Böhme concludes a discussion of the Sahelanthropus controversy with the following: “It is a shame that these inconsistencies and the lack of open discussion overshadow the remarkable paleontological results from Toros Menalla. Was it all meant to defend the theory that the oldest early hominin came from Africa, no matter the price?”[p130] Later, in a discussion of Wushan Man, Böhme notes that “In 2009, however, one of the American scientists abruptly retracted the conclusions he had put his name to fourteen years earlier. In an essay in Nature, he admitted that he had made a mistake, something that rarely happens in science.” Böhme then wonders aloud: “So, why the spectacular retreat? Was it to avoid jeopardizing the Out of Africa hypothesis?”[p144]
Finally, my review recognizes what I detect as larger issues with the book, as I note: “My most pointed criticism of Ancient Bones is that it is highly disorganized, meandering between science and polemic and unexpected later chapters that read like a college textbook on human evolution. It is often hard to know what to make of it.”
As I noted, I am not a paleontologist. Ultimately, science is self-correcting. Perhaps one day Böhme’s contentions will be vindicated, and the larger “Out of Africa” hypothesis will be discarded. But in the meantime, I remain both unpersuaded by her arguments and unconvinced that the paleontological community is deliberately preserving a dominant hypothesis known to be anchored to shaky ground.