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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... probably overly influ- enced by our perception of Neanderthals , who may have been pretty hairy and brutish . Rather , they are likely to have been fairly gracile and elegant , at least in comparison to Neanderthals . The simple reason ...
... probably natural selection that did them in . One of the things that the incoming Upper Palaeolithic Moderns had in their favour was a complex social structure . As we have seen , this probably began as an adaptation to cooperative ...
... probably exacer- bated by the spread of disease and the destruction of cropland during the hostilities , leading to a vicious chain reaction of mortality . Given all of the negative aspects of the Neolithic revolution , why did our ...