The Journey of Man: A Genetic OdysseyPenguin Adult, 2003 M05 29 - 288 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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... molecules could serve as a sort of molecular clock , documenting the time that has elapsed since a common ancestor through the number of amino acid changes . In a paper published in 1965 , they actually refer to molecules as ' documents ...
... molecules , showing sequence changes accumulating on each lineage . itself , making use of Ockham's razor to minimize the number of inferred amino acid changes and working back to the likely starting point ( see Figure 1 ) . Molecules ...
... molecules using a technique known as High Pressure Liquid Chromatography ( HPLC for short ) . In particular , he was trying to develop a method of identifying the sequence of a DNA molecule using HPLC , which separates molecules much ...