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 23
... effect , it provides us with a philosophical time machine with which to travel back and dig around in a vanished age . Pretty impressive stuff . Even Darwin was an early adherent - Huxley actually scolded him on one occasion for being ...
... effect , it provides us with a philosophical time machine with which to travel back and dig around in a vanished age . Pretty impressive stuff . Even Darwin was an early adherent - Huxley actually scolded him on one occasion for being ...
Page 47
... effect of always returning to the same island is that , while it encourages speciation between islands - with each island evolving into its own species over time - it tends to homogenize the birds that breed on any particular island ...
... effect of always returning to the same island is that , while it encourages speciation between islands - with each island evolving into its own species over time - it tends to homogenize the birds that breed on any particular island ...
Page 149
... effect of this climatic change was to favour grasses , which produce seeds in the spring and then lie dormant over ... effects of rising global temperatures kicked in . This reduced the yield of cereals , and ( as with arid periods in ...
... effect of this climatic change was to favour grasses , which produce seeds in the spring and then lie dormant over ... effects of rising global temperatures kicked in . This reduced the yield of cereals , and ( as with arid periods in ...
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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