Overview

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 work, 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 influenced) but to create a family tree for the whole of humanity.

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9780141008325

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Advances in science are often the result of advances in the tools of science. Simply being able to make instruments which measured length, volume and time accurately created the first explosion of discovery, and the invention of each successive instrument or procedure has added to the growth of scientific knowledge. In the 1950s X-ray crystallography led to the discovery of the structure of DNA and 20 years later the sequencing of the molecule started a revolution in science that has continued to the present day. Anthropology has been one of the beneficiaries of this advance. Previously the search for the origins of man was largely the province of fossil hunters and biology was only able to offer limited help. Work with blood groups had given indications, but it was the study of mitochondrial DNA that led to the identification of our earliest common female ancestor, who lived about 150,000 years ago in Africa. Further work with the Y-chromosome (the male equivalent of mitochondrial DNA) offered geneticists another useful tool for studying human diversity. 50,000 years ago modern man began an exodus from the cradle of Africa, moving along coastal Africa through Asia and ending up in Australasia. Other groups moved north at a steady rate of several kilometres per year, some ending up in Europe and others eventually crossing the Bering Strait into North America. Spencer Wells follows this journey using other branches of scientific knowledge, including clues from languages, and offers proof that Neanderthal man (already present in Europe) represents a separate species from modern Homo Sapiens and has no part in our ancestry. Investigations of the Y-chromosome yield other insights into the arrival of man into north America (a mere ten individuals account for the whole ethnic diversity among Native Americans), and the relationships between the various branches of the Family of Man. Spencer Wells explains the science in detail, which helps make this book all the more compelling, and the story it tells, revealed by the living cells of our bodies, all the more astonishing. 48 pages of beautiful colour photographs by Mark Read illustrate some of the race groups referred to in the text. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Spencer Wells received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1994, and subsequently moved to Stanford University, where he worked with Luca Cavalli-Sforza. He then led the population genetics research group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford.

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