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 86
... spoken tens of thousands of years ago - rather than a programmed anatomical by - product . It is likely that both attributes play a role , with the most basic sounds having been used in the first human language because they are the most ...
... spoken tens of thousands of years ago - rather than a programmed anatomical by - product . It is likely that both attributes play a role , with the most basic sounds having been used in the first human language because they are the most ...
Page 142
... spoken in the Americas - over 600 by some estimates – have long been a contentious issue for linguists . Are they related to each other , or is their diversity simply too great to be subsumed into a few language ' families ' ? Amer ...
... spoken in the Americas - over 600 by some estimates – have long been a contentious issue for linguists . Are they related to each other , or is their diversity simply too great to be subsumed into a few language ' families ' ? Amer ...
Page 190
... spoken by 90 per cent of the people in the world – despite the fact that linguists recognize over 6,000 distinct tongues . Clearly , most are spoken by only a few people . The future of most of these languages is uncertain at best ...
... spoken by 90 per cent of the people in the world – despite the fact that linguists recognize over 6,000 distinct tongues . Clearly , most are spoken by only a few people . The future of most of these languages is uncertain at best ...
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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