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