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 20
... variation , in particular large- scale chromosomal rearrangements in fruit flies . He pioneered techniques in genetic analysis , and his laboratory in New York was to be the epicentre of a revolution in biology during the mid ...
... variation , in particular large- scale chromosomal rearrangements in fruit flies . He pioneered techniques in genetic analysis , and his laboratory in New York was to be the epicentre of a revolution in biology during the mid ...
Page 54
... variation . What this diagram showed was that the oldest splits in the ancestry of the Y - chromosome occurred in ... variation to tell us about these questions of very deep history . Once we reach this point , there is nothing more that ...
... variation . What this diagram showed was that the oldest splits in the ancestry of the Y - chromosome occurred in ... variation to tell us about these questions of very deep history . Once we reach this point , there is nothing more that ...
Page 129
... variation on lineages where we do not have much single - letter variation - such as the M173 chromosomes . They give us a way to determine absolute dates that we can use to test our hypotheses about the timing of human migrations . The ...
... variation on lineages where we do not have much single - letter variation - such as the M173 chromosomes . They give us a way to determine absolute dates that we can use to test our hypotheses about the timing of human migrations . The ...
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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