Quite right, and the book is not at all about this long-discredited "Boskop race" - the phrase does not even occur in the book. The things that were "debunked" by Hawks are things that simply do not occur at all in the book. It's all quite odd about this poor Hawks guy and his anger.

See the authors discussion of this and related points at http://bigbrainbook.com/Home/reader-questions

Actually, Mr. Hawks' rant has itself been thoroughly debunked. Hawks states that "I haven't read the book"; so it's among the worst kind of anti-intellectualism; it is a rant, not a review. The authors have quite a bit of response to the key points at http://www.bigbrainbook.com/Home/reader-questions [bigbrainbook.com]

It turns out that the guy is debating some old anthropologist canard about a "Boskop race" - this concept never appears in the book; in fact, the book literally never even uses the phrase "Boskop race". The book is not about any of this at all. It just takes as a starting point those SKULLS (not anything about races). The skulls are quite real. There are many of them, from Boskop (south africa) and all over other african, asian, and european sites. The book goes through all of this!

Pretty much nothing in Hawks' rant is anything that occurs in the book at all. In fact, it's better than that - the book has an entire chapter (Chapter 10) that points out that the very idea of such "races" has itself been thoroughly debunked.

What the book talks about are the skulls, and the brains that once were in them. The Boskop skulls are not in dispute; they exist and have been measured -- and furthermore the book makes the clear point, repeatedly, that there are many of these skulls, all from 10,000 - 40,000 years ago, all over Europe, Asia, Africa -- all of them larger than present-day human skulls. The question that the book asks is why they are shrinking, and what are the implications. Pretty much all the points raised here are discussed in the book (e.g., larger cetacean brains, smaller Einstein brain, the old and discredited anthropology argument, recent publications on these large skulls (e.g., Fish Hoek, Skhul, Tuinplass, many others); there is even a table in the book on these).

The book is actually highly scientifically accurate; yes, the authors are indeed respected neuroscientists (with scientific careers that are unquestioned except by the aggrieved Mr. Hawks).

All this info was gotten from a page the authors put up, which anyone can access at http://www.bigbrainbook.com/Home/reader-questions [bigbrainbook.com]