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. |
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Page 30
... common than in the rest of our genome , it was a good place to look . Rebecca Cann , as part of her PhD work in Wilson's laboratory , began to study the pattern of mtDNA variation in humans from around the world . The Berkeley group ...
... common than in the rest of our genome , it was a good place to look . Rebecca Cann , as part of her PhD work in Wilson's laboratory , began to study the pattern of mtDNA variation in humans from around the world . The Berkeley group ...
Page 48
... common - we all have our favourite scapegoats for anecdotes about ' inbreeding ' . But even if the degree of relatedness isn't high , over time the slight degree of inbreeding that has occurred in all traditional societies will tend to ...
... common - we all have our favourite scapegoats for anecdotes about ' inbreeding ' . But even if the degree of relatedness isn't high , over time the slight degree of inbreeding that has occurred in all traditional societies will tend to ...
Page 164
... common throughout the Indo - European languages , as are those for tools and weapons . Perhaps most interestingly , there is a rich vocabulary for horses and wheeled vehicles in common among all the languages , suggesting that the PIE ...
... common throughout the Indo - European languages , as are those for tools and weapons . Perhaps most interestingly , there is a rich vocabulary for horses and wheeled vehicles in common among all the languages , suggesting that the PIE ...
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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