| View Larger Image | The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey | Paperbackby Spencer Wells (Author)
| List Price: | $14.95 | | Price: | $10.17 | | You Save: | $4.78 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Random House Trade Paperbacks | | Page Count: | 240 Pages | | Publication Date: | February 17, 2004 | | Sales Rank: | 35,618th |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780812971460
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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. |
Amazon.com Review
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 |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 65 reviews)
|
Incomplete Discussion of a Fascinating Topic by KJ Anderson  1 Stars
November 21, 2009
The Journey of Man, by Spencer Wells, is a disappointment to anyone interested in human pre-history and even slightly knowledgeable about recent scientific developments. While Wells, a geneticist himself, gets the basics correct, his interpretation is apparently caught up in the academic feud between his mentor, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and Oxford professor of genetics Bryan Sykes. Brilliant men can disagree in academic debate, but to completely ignore Sykes' contribution to mitochondrial DNA simply makes this book suspect.
It is likely that prejudice that also encourages Wells to employ an overtly sexist interpretation to the exclusion of a more balanced approach. While much of his analysis is based solely on one branch of genetics - the evolution of male Y-chromosomes - other researchers have found ways to present this material objectively without resorting to stale sexual stereotypes.
This approach is probably more apparent to me because I had purchased this Wells book at the same time as The Seven Daughters of Eve by Sykes. Although Skyes'personalization of early mDNA findings is a bit over the top at the end, by creating fictional scenarios of early human life, his book, overall, is a much more balanced view of genetic research presented in an objective and interesting way.
| |
Would like more substance by D. Gamon  3 Stars
October 07, 2009
There is no in-depth explanation of mitochondrial DNA dating, Y-chromosome dating, etc., in the book. I understand that the fact that mtDNA doesn't undergo replication/reshuffling is supposed to aid the usefulness of mtDNA as a dependable evolutionary clock, as is the supposed fact that the mtDNA doesn't interact with the environment, meaning that there isn't any kind of selection of certain coded traits over others, so overall there are these arguments that the rate of change/accumulation of mutations is steady and predictable, etc., so we can triangulate back from existing variation in a gene pool to a common ancestor at a point in time we can infer based on the degree of present diversity. But as far as this business of a common ancestor goes, how would this be any different from the notion that all males alive in a world that happened to have an exclusively patrilinear naming system happened to be able to trace all their names back to a single male living 50,000 (or whenever) years ago? So all males alive right now just happened to be named "Smith," tracing their ancestry in unbroken lines all the way back to some "Smith" living 50,000 years ago -- while all the Joneses, Denningtons, Coopers, Gamonators and Katzenellenbogens just happened to experience breaks in their male lines and thus died out, name-wise? Unless I'm thinking of this wrong, if "Eve" had a daughter and a son Barney, and Barney married Betty, and they had kids, and so on, we would have to assume that all those offspring of Barney and Betty died out sometime between then and now. Otherwise there would be mtDNA in our gene pool that wouldn't triangulate back to Eve. Not to mention all the offspring of Eve's friends Wilma, Rutabaga, Parsnip, Tutu, and Kumquat. Am I thinking of it wrong? It seems preposterous.
Anyway, this is not Wells, it is the methodology, or the problem of conceptualizing the findings that the methodology brings us to.
But a propos of Wells. One thing that I do NOT like is his way of, in passing, alluding to someone's notion or hypothesis or tossing out a thought about this or that and then moving briskly on as if the notion had been somehow validated or indeed had any validity. Example:
"The populations involved [in populations in Africa showing 'ancient lineages' by virtue of genetic diversity] encompass the African Rift Valley, extending into south-western Africa, where people known as the San -- formerly known as the Bushmen -- have a very strong signal of the diversity that characterized the earliest human populations. They also speak one of the strangest languages on the planet, notable for its use of clicks... The languages of the family are incredibly complicated. English, for example, has thirty-one distinguishable sounds... while the San !Xu language... has 141. While it is uncertain exactly which forces govern the acquisition of linguistic diversity, this figure is certainly suggestive of an ancient pedigree -- in exactly the same way that genetic diversity accumulates to a greater extent over longer time periods."
But this is patent nonsense, on multiple levels. First, no linguist would propose that a large phoneme inventory, or the possesion of click phonemes, is suggestive of an "ancient pedigree." If you're writing fantasy novels, that stuff might wash, but it won't in an ostensible presentation of scientific findings. Second, Wells is confusing diversity with complexity. While if you have a given language and you let time pass, other things being equal the greater the amount of time that passes the greater the diversity among the daughter languages, nobody would propose that the longer you wait the more "complex" the language would become, any more than someone would imagine that a biological organism would become more "complex" if you wait a while. So this is just muddle-headedness, or worse, because it really reminds me of the Fox News trick of saying, in passing, that "some people say" something or other that is really not something some people say, it is really the opinion of the commentator being passed on as something "some people say." And it has no foundation.
So here, when he says "While it is uncertain exactly which forces govern the acquisition of linguistic diversity...," it comes off as dishonest, because clearly he knows nothing about the topic, and he is disingenuously positioning his own muddle-headedness in terms of "uncertainty" in the field (a field he knows nothing about, and obviously failed to talk to anyone from, if you accept my syntax) and using that to support his evidence on completely different grounds for the "ancient pedigree" of the San. Overall I find the linguistic references gratuitous and poorly thought out, and they undermine the credibility of the author. Beyond that, I have no real way of judging the genetic studies.
| |
The Journey of Man: A genetic odyssey by Nancy C. Constantin 3 Stars
July 09, 2009
The book's condition was described by the vendor as "very good". However, several chapters had underlining in pencil. Condition would probably be described as "good". No big deal! I'm sure the book will read fine.
Nancy
| |
Fascinating topic by bluecloud (NJ, USA)  4 Stars
April 24, 2009
I would recommend the book especially for those who want to delve deeper into the topic after watching the PBS documentary with the same name. It is a well written book. When going over the topics of DNA, Y chromosome, gene mutation, etc, if the author had doodled a couple very basic sketches - without turning it into a biology book - it would have helped lay people like me tremendously. Also, the author makes several assumptions (climate, life styles, etc) when explaining the migration paths of our ancestors. I am not an expert in the field, but I have a feeling that these should be taken by a grain of salt. All in all, this is a story of cutting edge technology leading to fascinating findings about our ancestors.
| |
Genetics of the Out of Africa odyssey by John C. Landon (New York City)  5 Stars
March 21, 2009
Superb little book on the genetics of human evolution, and in the process a new perspective on the 'Out of Africa' question. The suddenness of this new science, with its revolutionary perspective on man, his origins and history, is compelling and it makes even books of a decade ago seem out of date. This book itself may need updates, but the basic snapshot of the human genetic odyssey is breathtaking in its scope.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project
by Spencer Wells (Author)
Travel backward through time from today's scattered billions to the handful of early humans who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago and are ancestors to us all.
In Deep Ancestry, scientist and National Geographic explorer Spencer Wells shows how tiny genetic changes add up over time into a fascinating story. Using scores of real-life examples, helpful analogies, and detailed diagrams and illustrations, he explains exactly how each and every individual's DNA contributes another piece to the...
| 
| Journey of Man
Starring: Dr. Spencer Wells
Directed By: Clive Maltby
Also With: Gregers Sall (Editor)
Studio: Pbs Release Date: 05/05/2009 Run time: 120 minutes
| 
| The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
by Bryan Sykes (Author)
The national bestseller that reveals how we are descended from seven prehistoric women. One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix, The Seven Daughters of Eve reveals the remarkable story behind a groundbreaking scientific discovery. After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Bryan Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a European but also that he has living...
| 
| Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins
by Steve Olson (Author)
In a journey across four continents, acclaimed science writer Steve Olson traces the origins of modern humans and the migrations of our ancestors throughout the world over the past 150,000 years. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Mapping Human History is a groundbreaking synthesis of science and history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the latest genetic research, linguistic evidence, and archaeological findings, Olson reveals the surprising unity among modern humans and...
| 
| Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
by Bryan Sykes (Author)
From the best-selling author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, an illuminating guide to the genetic history of the British Isles. One of the world's leading geneticists, Bryan Sykes has helped thousands find their ancestry in the British Isles. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, which resulted from a systematic ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, traces the true genetic makeup of...
|
|
|
