From the Bookshelf: Inherit the Stars

I was poking through a used book store a while back when I spotted three science fiction paperbacks by one author that I had read some time before. The thought of reading them again was interesting enough that I bought all three, and I started with "Inherit the Stars" by James P. Hogan. (To be fair, the book can be read online in Baen Books's catalogue... but mentioning that, of course, might help others to follow along with this post.) It's somehow intriguing in a peculiar way. The book might be called "hard science fiction," but with the old-fashioned allusion that the writing style is a little odd, perhaps even a little inelegant, in a way I can't quite articulate, and the characters aren't that memorable with perhaps a few exceptions... and yet, the central idea the book is built around is compelling. After some pages of leisurely development towards the introduction of that idea, we learn at last that in the near-future exploration of the moon, a human body in a red spacesuit is discovered... and determined to be fifty thousand years old. Where did he come from?
( 'The man on the moon was dead'... things may be given away in allusions )