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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... variation , in particular large- scale chromosomal rearrangements in fruit flies . He pioneered techniques in genetic analysis , and his laboratory in New York was to be the epicentre of a revolution in biology during the mid ...
... variation on lineages where we do not have much single - letter variation - such as the M173 chromosomes . They give us a way to determine absolute dates that we can use to test our hypotheses about the timing of human migrations . The ...
... variation seen in Europe today . In other words , the human population had been through what is known as a bottleneck a reduction in size followed by a period of growth . Patterns of mtDNA variation also support this model of ...