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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... past , we are literally studying their genealogy - the history of their genes . As we have seen , people inherit their genes from their parents , so the study of genetic history is also a study of the history of the people carrying ...
... past , when we stop seeing genetic diversity in our mtDNA and Y - chromosome lineages . Since mtDNA and the Y - chromosome are completely independent parts of our genetic tapestry , it is perhaps not terribly surprising that they ...
... past half - century from a few thousand years in the early 1960s to as much as 60,000 years today . As new dating methods - each with their own sources of error - have been applied to Australian prehistory , they have extended the age ...