We all know about Stiggins and the other recreated Neanderthals in Thursday's world. It was one of the things I liked about the book in the first place, as I studied prehistoric man as part of my degree.

I've got an excellent book by Roger McBride Allen, titled 'Orphan of Creation'. It's about a black American archaeologist, who specialises in human evolution. She finds the remains of Australopithecines, one of the earliest hominids, buried in the old Southern plantation owned by her family. But these prehistoric creatures only died 150 years ago.

The heroine, Barbara, find that these creatures had been imported from Africa, and tracks down the tribe that still uses the Australiopithecines as slaves. She inadvertantly buys one, and takes it to America, where there is a huge discussion over the rights of this creature and its level of intelligence. Barbara gives the Australiopithecine a name: Thursday !

It's a fascinating, and well-written book, that makes some interesting points about how close mankind is genetically, to other animals, and how diffiult it is for some people to accept this.

i actually don't find this difficult to believe... whether you want to is another story.... BUT anyway the proof is all in the genes all in the DNA

As fossil evidence has been pushing the suggested date for the origin of the Australopithecines back in time, whereas evidence due to molecular biology has been bringing the suggested date for the separation between the Hominid lineage & the Chimps-&-Gorillas lineage forwards, somebody's now come up with a theory that the Hominid/Ape split actually occured during the [known] existence of the Australopithecines: If the scientist concerned is right then, back when one of the "gracile" Australopithecine forms was giving rise to Homo habilis, the Chimps evolved from another "gracile" form and the Gorillas from one of the "robust" forms.
(There was an article about this theory in New Scientist magazine, a few years ago, which was where I first read about it. I'm not entirely convinced, but wouldn't rule the possibility out completely...)

Somebody or other wrote a series of books (which I last read any of over twenty years ago, hence my vagueness about the details) about one of Tarzan's relatives, in which they suggested that his "Apes" had actually been a remnant population of Australopithecines rather than either Chimps or Gorillas.

Harry Turtledove wrote a story (which he later expanded into a book) set on an alternative Earth where Homo erectus had found its way across the Berings Straits/land-bridge but Homo sapiens hadn't, so that the first Europeans to visit the Americas discovered proto-humans rather than "Indians" there.

I can think of several other SF stories in which various "early" hominid forms survived until recent times, too.

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

Stepan Baxter, who has written loads of excellant sci-fi recently came up with Evolution, which is basically a series of stories featuring human ancestors starting from shrew like things 65 million years ago and finishing with us. Not his best book ever, but its different, and pretty good.
Also, his recent Space/Time/Origin series features various homos in the second two books.

If you like sf, i'd heartily recommend him.

rob