Ages of Man

The author writes in this book about the role of the human hand in supporting human learning, physical characteristics and development before and since Homo sapiens appears on the earth. The earliest appearance of a manlike creature in ages of man is with the Australopithecine, which is the name of the first "southern apes" that walked upright in Africa. "Lucy" is a fossilized example who appears on earth from 3.9 million years ago. Although her hand is not apelike, as shown on pages 22-23, her brain is the size of a chimpanzee brain. Three features distinguish this first example of a "tool-using hominid" according to Sherwood Washburn, but he claims the brain is the last organ to evolve after hominids become "handier" with tools.

The schematic on page 17 graphically illustrates the anthropological reference dates used by Wilson in this work to denote human development periods. The family...