Fast pace of the race against extinction

The Red Queen effect describes the arms race that is evolution. Coined by Leigh van Valen in 1973 the principle states that evolution mostly consists of tracking environmental shifts. Adapting to new environments is less important for explaining change than just keeping up with the one you are already in. Hence the Red Queen, who ran as fast as she could just to stay in the same place.

Writing about human evolution takes you through the looking glass to meet the Red Queen effect head-on. The pace of change in this field is so great that the turnover time for a new edition of a standard text is now very short indeed. Competition between rival texts is also keen, confirming van Valen's view about the pace of change needed to maintain the status quo and where a missed step can result in extinction.

Roger Lewin, a self-confessed observer of human evolution, has always responded to these pressures. This textbook follows three very successful editions of Human Evolution: an illustrated introduction and the new expanded book speaks with an authority bestowed by survival. As a scientific spectator he followed John Pfeiffer's ground-breaking synthesis The Emergence of Man (1969), which also went through several editions. One of Pfeiffer's great strengths that brought the subject alive and made each new edition essential reading were his interviews with just about everyone who had something interesting to say. This approach transformed his position from spectator to participant.

The great synthesis nowadays has to cover an enormous intellectual territory. Lewin does this well. Everything that you would expect is there - theories of evolution, primates, changing brains and body sizes and the fossils and archaeology of the past five million years. Each chapter is followed by well-chosen key questions. The book is clearly illustrated and easy to use thanks to a glossary and index. But where Pfeiffer put in a lot of leg-work meeting many people to report directly on their contribution to human evolution, Lewin is more selective. His text contains comments which give it that up-to-the-minute flavour, but from the few rather than the many. While this reflects today's army of specialists, which would defeat even the energy of the Red Queen, I cannot help feeling that the format is not working as it should. With email and the Internet potentially giving students access to those doing the work, I wonder how long these classic spectator-written texts will last?

But until they become extinct, Lewin's great strength lies in the clarity of his writing. The new section on systematics, where he leads us through cladistic terminology, is excellent. He is stronger on the genetics and fossils than he is on the archaeology, where the treatment is driven by traditional views of the evidence, most of them derived from research in Africa, which rather misrepresents the global picture of recent advances. Moreover, agriculture is tacked on as an afterthought rather than treated as an integral part of the long-term evolution of human society.

By running so fast, errors and repetitions have crept in. For a core textbook too many sites are misspelt, as are important words such as neoteny. As the Red Queen said: "It's too late to correct it". We will just have to wait for the next edition.

Clive Gamble is professor of archaeology, University of Southampton.