The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
by Spencer Wells (Author)

Book now available in paperback. Journey of Man video also available:
Journey of Man video also available:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000AYL48/qid=1076170029/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-1149725-1881610?v=glance&s=dvd

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Book Description:

Around 60,000 years ago, a man--identical to us in all important respects--lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up 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?

Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they fought, loved, and influenced.

Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups, and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be accounted for by just ten individuals.

It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind--as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries, questions now more compelling than ever.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com:

Spencer Wells traces human evolution back to our very first ancestor in The Journey of Man. Along the way, he sums up the explosive effect of new techniques in genetics on the field of evolutionary biology and all available evidence from the fossil record. Wells's seemingly sexist title is purposeful: he argues that the Y chromosome gives us a unique opportunity to follow our migratory heritage back to a sort of Adam, just as earlier work in mitochondrial DNA allowed the identification of Eve, mother of all Homo sapiens. While his descriptions of the advances made by such luminary scientists as Richard Lewontin and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza can be dry, Wells comes through with sparkling metaphors when it counts, as when he compares genetic drift to a bouillabaisse recipe handed down through a village's generations. Though finding our primal male is an exciting prospect, the real revolution Wells describes is racial. Or rather, nonracial, as he reiterates the scientific truth that our notions of what makes us different from each other are purely cultural, not based in biology. The case for an "out of Africa" scenario of human migration is solid in this book, though Wells makes it clear when he is hypothesizing anything controversial. Readers interested in a fairly technical, but not overwhelming, summary of the remarkable conclusions of 21st-century human evolutionary biology will find The Journey of Man a perfect primer. --Therese Littleton
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From Publishers Weekly:

In this surprisingly accessible book, British geneticist Wells sets out to answer long-standing anthropological questions of where humans came from, how we migrated and when we arrived in such places as Europe and North America. To trace the migration of human beings from our earliest homes in Africa to the farthest reaches of the globe, Wells calls on recent DNA research for support. Clues in the blood of present groups such as eastern Russia's Chukchi, as well as the biological remnants of... read more
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Death Blow for the Multiregionalists, October 26, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Vienna, Austria

After reading this book, I don't know how anyone can seriously entertain the theory of multiregionalism anymore. The genetic evidence is conclusive and proves that we have all descended from a band of anatomically modern humans somewhere in Africa 50,000 years ago.

Wells has written a cogent and persuasive book that looks at every phase and aspect of the human odyssey from these African origins to modern times. If I have any criticism, however, it's that the book tends to slow down a bit after the settlement of the Americas is discussed. The chapters on the spread of agriculture and the evolution of language were less coherent than the others and seemed to digress from the central thesis. Still, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the recent origins of modern man. It shows that only 2000 generations ago, we were all one family living in one place. The racial differences we all note today are thus very recent and very superficial. This is all the more important to understand now that the world is heading toward genetic convergence rather than genetic divergence. In another couple thousand years, we will probably all look like Tiger Woods (one of the multi-racial examples Wells cites in his book).
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A Brilliantly-told History of Man's Genetic Past, July 22, 2003
Reviewer: Jeffery Steele (see more about me) from Taipei, Taiwan

Spencer Wells has written the definitive popular account of the search for man's origins and his populating of the planet. Not just a popularizer, but an actual scientist who has worked in the new discipline of population genetics, Wells presents complicated scientific findings with surprising precision and clarity, and still avoids the common mistake of most popular scientific accounts by never overstating his claims.

The book begins with a short historical sketch of the scientific notions of man's beginnings. Did Homo sapiens evolve independently in several different parts of the globe, as some anthropologists believed, or do all men have a common beginning, a single root? After surveying the early scientific opinions, Wells looks at what genes have to say about man's origins and how he populated the planet.

Wells covers some archaeological finds and, later in the book, uses linguistics to buttress his genetic evidence, but he primarily looks at DNA patterns found today in local populations believed to have existed in their areas for millennia. The results are fascinating. An early coastal migration from Africa to Australia, for example, is hypothesized to take into account remnant black populations spread throughout Southeast Asia, a relatively early settlement of Australia compared to other places on the globe, and the lack of archaeological finds, which suggests the migration stayed close to the water's edge and was later swallowed up by the rising oceans after the end of the ice age.

But it is not the results that make this book so much as Wells' brilliant, short descriptions of the science behind the answers. He has a concrete way of describing everything from the statistics behind DNA sampling to why the conceptual Adam and Eve did not co-exist at the same time.
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Not Science, October 28, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from California

First of all, one must clearly understand that the science of genetics is in its infancy, and is vastly more complicated than this author would lead you to believe. At this stage in the game a scientist simply cannot be confident that he properly understands the extremely limited data that he is analyzing. Any geneticist claiming to be able to make any but the most tentative conclusions at this date is simply a liar or a fool.

Second, one must also understand that all scientists, but particularly those studying the genetics of man, are under great social pressure to conform their findings to the myths of the day. The predominant myth of the day is that the races of mankind don't exist; or that if they do, the differences between the races are only "skin deep." In reality, racial differences are not only morphological, but intellectual and temperamental. It is simply ridiculous to claim that racial differences are superficial because they are relatively recent (and I doubt they are as recent as the author believes, in any case). Proof of this is easily found in another species: the domesticated dog, the current races of which are all more recent than the races of mankind. Dogs are even more genetically similar than man, and yet the various races (breeds) exhibit great differences in morphology, intellegince and temperament. A few allele variations here and there can make a huge difference.

It is amusing to see that the very people are so desperate to minimize racial differences are usually the same people who claim to celebrate "diversity." If race doesn't really exist, or is only "skin deep," then there is actually no diversity to celebrate. But, of course, race DOES exist; and even those who claim not to believe this actually do, or they would swoon with rapture over the (silly) idea of the world's Homo Sapiens gene pool blending into one huge "Tiger Woods" race. So much for diversity!

Now, as for the "Out of Africa" versus "Multiregional" debate. First, genetic evidence alone cannot prove on what continent a species or subspecies arose. Fossil evidence indicates that Homo Erectus arose in Africa, but it also indicates that Homo Sapiens arose in Eurasia. The eventual concensus theory will probably be that the Homo Erectus evolved into Homo Sapiens in Eurasia, and then spread out and interbred with existing Homo Erectus groups in Africa and Asia, thus giving rise to the present races of man. This is the theory that best fits the current fossil AND genetic evidence.

In any case, and in the final analysis, the entire debate about WHERE mankind arose is important only as an intellectual puzzle, and is completely irrelvant to help resolve any of today's social issues. There appears to be an strong irrational urge on the part of many people to want to believe that some genetic "Adam" or "Eve" was African. Perhaps this urge is a vestige of European guilt for culturally dominating the world; whether this is true or not, it should be understood that an African ancestor would not have been Negroid, because Negroid racial characteristics are an adaptation to a specific rain forest habitat that did not exist in mankind's postulated East African playpen.

In summation, this is another of the dismal books being churned out these days in which science is misused to achieve social ends or to conform to social ideals. The state of genetics is NOT at the point today that we can state when or where Homo Sapiens came into existence (even provided would could agree on the dividing line between Erectus and Sapiens). We CAN state that racial differences are more than "skin deep." These facts are anathema to the author of this book, and obviously to most of the other reviewers, but in fact none of these facts implies any value judgements. It is quite true that people will always seek to use science to achieve social change, but the misuse of science for such purposes can objectively be only called propaganda, not science. I, like many people, hope that mankind can some day build a worldwide social structure that will ensure justice and bread for every single person on earth, regardless of race or any social factors; but such a structure, if it is to endure, must be built upon the solid bedrock of truth rather than upon the shifting sands of propaganda.