The Extinct Human Species That Was Smarter Than Us

Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger (Palgrave Macmillan, $26.95)

“Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams,” says John Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. He might have been speaking for the Boskops, an almost forgotten group of early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Judging from fossil remains, scientists say the Boskops were similar to modern humans but had small, childlike faces and huge melon heads that held brains about 30 percent larger than our own.