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 98
... early human populations followed herds of grazing animals – particularly antelope - from summer pastures in the hills surrounding the Mediterranean and the Red Sea , down to the warmer coastal regions in the winter . It was this gradual ...
... early human populations followed herds of grazing animals – particularly antelope - from summer pastures in the hills surrounding the Mediterranean and the Red Sea , down to the warmer coastal regions in the winter . It was this gradual ...
Page 108
... early human evolution , has compared the Sahara to a kind of hominid ' pump ' . During wetter periods , the Sahara would have sustained human populations , perhaps focused around oases or rivers , or limited to zones that received ...
... early human evolution , has compared the Sahara to a kind of hominid ' pump ' . During wetter periods , the Sahara would have sustained human populations , perhaps focused around oases or rivers , or limited to zones that received ...
Page 137
... human in origin - they could easily have resulted from natural breakage . These doubts have led palaeoanthro- pologist Richard Klein to suggest that ' Furada may soon join the long list of dubious claims [ for early human settlement in ...
... human in origin - they could easily have resulted from natural breakage . These doubts have led palaeoanthro- pologist Richard Klein to suggest that ' Furada may soon join the long list of dubious claims [ for early human settlement in ...
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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