The Journey of Man: A Genetic OdysseyAllen Lane, 2002 - 224 pages Around 60,000 years ago, a man walked the soil of Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did he come to be father to all of us - a real life Adam? To find out, Spencer Wells embarked on a unique voyage of discovery, travelling the world and deciphering the genetic codes of people from the Sahara Desert to Siberia. He reveals how our DNA enables us to work out where our ancestors lived, (and who they may have fought, loved and learned from); to re-trace their footsteps from Africa to the far corners of the earth ; to understand how we evolved into such a huge variety of sizes, shapes and races - and, ultimately, to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. |
From inside the book
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Page 45
... ancestors in each generation ( around twenty - five years ) , when we go back in time about 500 years each of us must have had over a million living ancestors . If we go back to the time of the Norman invasion of England , around a ...
... ancestors in each generation ( around twenty - five years ) , when we go back in time about 500 years each of us must have had over a million living ancestors . If we go back to the time of the Norman invasion of England , around a ...
Page 58
... ancestors who lived at the time of our genetic Adam ? It is difficult to imagine what our common male and female ancestors would have looked like . We can only make informed guesses , based on the diversity we see in human populations ...
... ancestors who lived at the time of our genetic Adam ? It is difficult to imagine what our common male and female ancestors would have looked like . We can only make informed guesses , based on the diversity we see in human populations ...
Page 81
... ancestors come from over 70 per cent of men in southern England have it , showing that we all have the same recent ancestor . But this is not the only marker I have - if I trace my genetic lineage back in time , I also have additional ...
... ancestors come from over 70 per cent of men in southern England have it , showing that we all have the same recent ancestor . But this is not the only marker I have - if I trace my genetic lineage back in time , I also have additional ...
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Common terms and phrases
Aborigines actually Adam Africa agriculture analysis ancient animals anthropologists apes appear Asian Australia Cavalli-Sforza cent central Asia China chromosomes clan climate coastal colleagues common ancestor continent culture Darwin defined descendants developed earliest early human east Asia Eurasian Europe Europeans evolution evolutionary expansion extinct favour frequency genes genetic data genetic diversity genetic variation geneticists genome Hindu Kush hominid Homo erectus human diversity human genetic human migration human populations hunter-gatherers hunting ice age impala India Indo-European Indo-European languages infer ingredients journey known languages leap lifestyle linguistic living marker Mediterranean Middle East Middle Eastern migration million mitochondrial DNA modern humans molecules mtDNA mutations Native Americans Neanderthals Neolithic non-African northern nucleotide Nyae origin past perhaps polymorphisms recent region route sample Siberia simply soup recipes south-east Asia southern species spoken spread steppe suggests thousands trace unique Upper Palaeolithic western Y-chromosome lineages