How We Got Here
We have all seen images like the one above, suggesting a linear progression of the history of primates culminating in homo sapiens. Steve Olson’s book Mapping Human History builds on the work of paleontologists and evolutionary biologists over many decades in revealing a much more complex story. Indeed, the quote featured in this week’s puzzle underscores the tenuous and uncertain evolutionary path our species has taken.
The themed clues and answers recall a couple of the scientists in past centuries who contributed significantly to our understanding of how we got here, including Gregor Mendel (that “pea-brain”) and Charles Darwin, or at least his boat. How many themed references did you spot this time?
Mapping Human History was nominated for the 2002 National Book Award and received the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. We took considerable personal pleasure in constructing and presenting this acrostic. Steve Olson is both a college classmate of Jane’s and a friend whose many books have edified and entertained us. For those of you unfamiliar with Steve’s work, we encourage you to see for yourself.
And for those of you unfamiliar with Newsies, we delighted in the Broadway production of the musical some years back. Here’s a clip from one of its numbers performed at the 2012 Tony Awards. It will give you a sense of the “striking kids” mentioned in Clue K:
Clue T was really well done!
These Acrostics interweave fascinating bits of knowledge with eloquent passages from some particularly insightful readings.
They are much admired and appreciated.
Another super Sunday acrostic. At this point I feel safe in saying that Stewart and Balton have truly evolved into the new Cox and Rathvon.
I was proud of myself for getting PHAEDRUS right off the bat. That long ago liberal arts education is still paying dividends decades later! I caused myself no end of difficulties by filling in whew instead of PHEW and the Beagle instead of HMSBEAGLE, but as the quote began to take shape I was able to fix the issue without too many scratch outs. Picking Out Of Africa as the first answer was sheer brilliance, and I loved the other sneaky themed answers like SURVIVAL, NATURAL, SELECTION, and ADAPTOR.
Thanks for another entertaining puzzle. To find Mendel and Lennox in the same place takes me back to a certain time, both inside and outside the classroom. Having an award-winning friend as the author must have made this puzzle especially fun to create–congratulations!
My solve really flowed having words B, C and E right off. Annie Lennox is one of my favorites and I really liked the clue for SURVIVAL. With those and PHEW, I soon got Human and evolution… so was off and running. I’m a big fan of musicals, but hadn’t heard of NEWSIES, so that was fun. Thanks for the clip. Interesting phrase, “… relentless winnowing process …” Great quote.