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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... particular rhyme or reason as to where those mistakes might occur our genomes do not appear to favour certain types of mutation based on what the effect might be . Rather , we are like Heath Robinson engineers , forced to make use of ...
... particular sequence of these four nucleotides . In the same way that Morse code can convey a huge amount of information with only dots and dashes , so too can DNA encode the biological essence of an organism in the pattern of nucleo ...
... particular area tend to share a recent common ancestor , providing us with clear ' fingerprints ' of particular geographic regions . What this means is that the Y gives us the clearest evidence for the journeys followed by early humans ...