The Journey of Man: A Genetic OdysseyRandom House Trade Paperbacks, 2003 - 218 pages Around 60,000 years ago, a man—genetically identical to us—lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up as the father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races? Examining the hidden secrets of human evolution in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the revolutionary science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. Replete with marvelous anecdotes and remarkable information, from the truth about the real Adam and Eve to the way differing racial types emerged, The Journey of Man is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind. |
From inside the book
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Page 1
... look at people around the world . Why do we look so different from each other , and how did we come to inhabit such far - flung places ? Herodotus , the fifth - century BC Greek historian , provided posterity with far more than a ...
... look at people around the world . Why do we look so different from each other , and how did we come to inhabit such far - flung places ? Herodotus , the fifth - century BC Greek historian , provided posterity with far more than a ...
Page 29
... look like there have been mutations when there haven't , and because of this it causes us to overestimate the time that has elapsed since the common ancestor . - One of the insights that Wilson and several other geneticists had in the ...
... look like there have been mutations when there haven't , and because of this it causes us to overestimate the time that has elapsed since the common ancestor . - One of the insights that Wilson and several other geneticists had in the ...
Page 37
... look for them . Louis Leakey had grown up in Kenya . The son of English mission- aries , and raised in a Kikuyu village , he had spent his life looking for fossil remains in the valleys and riverbeds of the Rift . In 1959 at Olduvai ...
... look for them . Louis Leakey had grown up in Kenya . The son of English mission- aries , and raised in a Kikuyu village , he had spent his life looking for fossil remains in the valleys and riverbeds of the Rift . In 1959 at Olduvai ...
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Common terms and phrases
actually Adam Africa agriculture analysis ancient animals anthropologists apes appear Asian Australia Cavalli-Sforza cent central Asia China chromosomes clan climate coastal colleagues common ancestor continent culture Darwin defined descendants developed earliest early human east Asia Eurasian Europe Europeans evolution evolutionary expansion extinct favour frequency genes genetic data genetic diversity genetic pattern genetic variation geneticists genome hominid Homo erectus human diversity human genetic human migration human populations hunter-gatherers hunting ice age impala India Indo-European languages infer ingredients journey known last ice age leap lifestyle linguistic living marker Mediterranean Middle East Middle Eastern migration million mitochondrial DNA modern humans molecules mtDNA mutations Native Americans Neanderthals Neolithic non-African northern nucleotide origin past perhaps polymorphisms population genetics recent region route sample Siberia simply soup recipes south-east Asia southern species spoken spread steppe suggests thousands trace unique Upper Palaeolithic western Y-chromosome lineages