Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins ANNOTATION
Finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, Nonfiction.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In a journey across four continents, the 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. 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 "demonstrates just how naive some of our ideas about our human ancestry have been" (Discover). Olson offers a genealogy of all humanity, explaining, for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius as forebears. Olson also provides startling new perspectives on the invention of agriculture, the peopling of the Americas, the origins of language, the concept of race, and more. An engaging and lucid account, Mapping Human History will forever change how we think about ourselves and our relations with others.
SYNOPSIS
Olson, a science journalist in the US, has undertaken the ambitious task of describing and defining the history of genetic ancestry worldwide, concluding that, though our awareness is always drawn to the differences, in fact humans are all related. The book is organized by broad geographical area—Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia, Europe, and the Americas—with a final chapter on Hawaii as an example of a small place where several races come together. Olson talked to specialists in genetics as he traveled, and much of the book concerns the stories of different peoples seeking genetic answers to the question of their ancestry. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
Thanks to recent discoveries in genetics, explains science journalist Olson, we're learning about human history before any history was written down. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Combining insights from recent discoveries involving the analysis of mitochondrial DNA and more traditional archaeological theories, this work explores the origins of different human "races" and reflects on the meanings of DNA towards notions of ethnic identity. Noting that people who think of themselves as European can have mitochondrial DNA from halfway across the world and that often people who consider themselves the same ethnic group can have widely differing DNA, the author cautions against the overdetermination of ethnicity using DNA techniques. Along the way he discussed some of the complexities of the issue in figuring out the origins of peoples in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
The take-home message of this five-continent trek by science writer Olson (Biotechnology, not reviewed) is that races don't exist: genetically, we are all sisters and brothers under the skin. That message has been promulgated in the press and professional literature lately as geneticists track the DNA in the human genome as well as in a cell's mitochondria. These are the power factories that lie outside the cell nucleus, and we inherit them from our mothers. But Olson raises the level of discourse to a new high, assembling powerful evidence to support the no-races hypothesis. It all begins with "mitochondrial Eve," member of a band living in east Africa over 100,000 years ago. Her descendants were the modern humans who migrated into Eurasia and, some 7,500 generations later, peopled all parts of the planet. Similarly, humans are descended from a male who passed on his Y chromosome to sons. Opponents arguing for a multiregional origin of mankind posit that different continental groups gave rise to racially distinct humans. Not likely, Olson and his sources counter, citing archaeological, fossil, and particularly biological evidence. Basically, scientists search global DNA samples looking for patterns of mutations that enable the reconstruction of genetic history. Example: A woman who gives birth to two daughters, one with the mother's intact mitochondrial DNA and one with a single mutation, is the ancestor of two groups of females-one with the intact sequence, the other with the mutated form. These "haplotypes" create "haplogroups," enabling scientists to trace who went where when. Y chromosome and other gene mutations allow similar analyses-all pointing to diversity, but also tobiological identity. There are problems. Why no Neanderthal genes? What to do when researchers who want to study isolated groups or rare remains are accused of "stealing their DNA"? Even armed with the facts, can people ever overcome the cultural hierarchies that impose prejudice, stigma, slavery, genocide? Olson takes a major step in the right direction, but it will be a long journey.
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