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 37
... million years , with volcanoes , lakes , moun- tains and rivers coming and going at a brisk pace . For this reason , the accumulated layers of millions of years soil , volcanic ash , lake sediments - are constantly being tossed about ...
... million years , with volcanoes , lakes , moun- tains and rivers coming and going at a brisk pace . For this reason , the accumulated layers of millions of years soil , volcanic ash , lake sediments - are constantly being tossed about ...
Page 38
... million years ago . But according to the Berkeley mitochondrial data , Eve lived in Africa less than 200,000 years ago . How can we reconcile the two results ? It's all about timing Let's step back for a moment and consider the case ...
... million years ago . But according to the Berkeley mitochondrial data , Eve lived in Africa less than 200,000 years ago . How can we reconcile the two results ? It's all about timing Let's step back for a moment and consider the case ...
Page 151
... million at the time agriculture originated ; by the dawn of the Industrial Age , around 1750 , world population had risen to over 500 million . If Palaeolithic hunter - gatherer populations had taken over 50,000 years to increase from a ...
... million at the time agriculture originated ; by the dawn of the Industrial Age , around 1750 , world population had risen to over 500 million . If Palaeolithic hunter - gatherer populations had taken over 50,000 years to increase from a ...
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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