‘Fossil Men’ captures drama in search for oldest human

This is a story of intrigue, of anger, of decisions made at the point of a gun. Friendships made and lost, bitter jealousies, dizzying finds.

Not exactly what usually comes to mind when you think about archaeology.

Kermit Pattison has created a work of staggering depth that brings us into the search for the oldest human. In “Fossil Men,” he recounts the saga of “Ardi,” a skeleton uncovered in the rugged hills of Ethiopia by a brilliant and irascible American paleoanthropologist considered by many the world’s premier fossil hunter.

Ardi — short for Ardipithecus

ramidus — is the bony remains of a woman more than 4.4 million years old. Believed to be the earliest human ancestor yet discovered, she was dug from the ground by a team led by Tim White, whose energy at excavating and classifying bones is matched only by his fervor for disagreeing disagreeably with other scientists.

White’s grudges and battles with his peers are a recurring theme throughout the book, as he angrily fights off skeptics in academic wars waged at the highest levels of the international scientific establishment. White’s discovery threatened to upend beliefs about evolution that generations of academics had built their careers upon, and many weren’t ready to cede turf easily.

Pattison deftly weaves strands of science, sociology and political science into a compelling tale that stretches over decades.