The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey

Chapter One

In rural China, the highest compliment you can get is not that you're attractive or smart. It's that you work really hard. As I shift to stay in the scant midday shade offered by a deep ravine on the northern bank of the Yellow River, this proletarian attitude makes a lot of sense. When I left the United States earlier this month, spring had barely begun. Checking the calendar in my field notebook, I see that it's only mid May-too early in the season for a heat wave. Yet for the past few days, my team has endured triple digit temperatures. Each of us sports a tan several shades deeper than our normal hue. A few yards away, where he chips at a piece of freshwater limestone that just might contain a fossil, my colleague Wang Jingwen is beginning to live up to his nickname, which translates roughly as "black donkey." I'm told that the local villagers have been praising our work ethic, because when it gets this hot, even the peasants take a siesta under a shade tree.

We have no choice but to tolerate the heat of the noon sun, because it provides the best lighting condi ... read full excerpt from The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans ebook