Review of Gryning över Kalahari: hur människan blev människa (2005)
Lasse Berg (writer).
Read in 2026.
An overview of scientific research into the origins and “nature” of humankind, with a focus on the last 200 000 years.
In 2022, Svante Pääbo would be awarded a Nobel Prize for his foundational work in paleogenomics. Pääbo is mentioned in this book among the scientists adding new evidence to previously obscure aeons of human prehistory, but the book was written in a period of transition, when Pääbo was struggling and paleogenomics was still in its infancy. The book is deliberately breezy, with short summaries of interviews interspersed with bits of the author’s adventurous life, including his 100% subjective, anecdotal evidence in favour of the paleo diet. As you would expect, I can see most clearly how Berg is cutting corners when he touches on the stuff I know, like Robert Axelrod’s work iterating on various strategies in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Berg’s summaries of this work are so vague as to be almost wrong. He is clearly more at home and engaged in the archaeology, sometimes taking the time to lay out competing theories and cogently stating their flaws.
Despite the idiosyncratic writing style, the book as a whole is very touching. Berg is ultimately able to convey both the great importance of the research and its limitations, in a popular space.