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 5
... occurred without any drastic catalysts . If change could occur without invoking a major causal event , then why was it necessary to invoke them at all ? Why not simply assume that the earth is con- stantly changing at a very gradual ...
... occurred without any drastic catalysts . If change could occur without invoking a major causal event , then why was it necessary to invoke them at all ? Why not simply assume that the earth is con- stantly changing at a very gradual ...
Page 18
... occur at a rate of around thirty per genome per generation . Looking at it another way , each person alive today is carrying around thirty completely novel mutations that distinguish them from their parents . Mutations are random ...
... occur at a rate of around thirty per genome per generation . Looking at it another way , each person alive today is carrying around thirty completely novel mutations that distinguish them from their parents . Mutations are random ...
Page 43
... occurred in the past . As we saw in the last chapter , more polymorphic sites give us better resolution - if we only had Landsteiner's blood types to work with , everyone would be sorted into four categories : A , B , AB and O. To put ...
... occurred in the past . As we saw in the last chapter , more polymorphic sites give us better resolution - if we only had Landsteiner's blood types to work with , everyone would be sorted into four categories : A , B , AB and O. To put ...
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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