The Journey of Man: A Genetic OdysseyPenguin Adult, 2003 M05 29 - 224 pages Around 60,000 years ago, a man, identical to us in all important respects, walked the soil of Africa. Every man alive today is descended from him. How did he come to be father to all of us - a real-life Adam? And why do we come in such a huge variety of sizes, shapes, types and races if we all share a single prehistoric ancestor?
In this fascinating book, Spencer Wells shows how the truth about our ancestors is hidden in our genetic code, and reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible not just to discover where our ancestors lived (and who they may have fought, loved, learned from and influence) but to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. |
From inside the book
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... evolution - most edu- cated people had already come to see the world in an evolutionary context - but rather to realign humanity's place in it . When we viewed ourselves as the divine creation of an omnipotent being , we could easily ...
... evolution . It is one of Darwin's other subjects , discernible even in this , his earliest major work , which interests us here . It is a subject which is dealt with more subtly than his discussion of biological evolution , presaging ...
... evolution to pursue a different path , resulting in oddities like the platypus and the kangaroo . It has also meant ... evolutionary antecedents means that humans must have colonized Australia from somewhere else . But where did they ...