The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey [Paperback]

The Journey of Man is not just some old fashioned sexist travelogue about a bloke in shorts and sandals wandering the byways of the world. As the subtitle explains, it is "a genetic odyssey" of men rather than women. We have heard a lot about the matriarchal "African Eve". As Spencer Wells says, we all have an African foremother who lived approximately 150,000 years ago. She handed down her genetic mitochondrial "handbag" specifically to her daughter and on over the generations and millennia. But what about the male contribution to today's human genome?

Luckily for the male ego and population geneticists it turns out that blokes also have some unique chromosomal hand baggage hidden away in the non-recombining part of the Y chromosome. Like female mitochondrial DNA it is passed solely between father and son and is particularly useful for studying human diversity. This is because it is so big--much bigger than mitochondrial DNA--and accumulates mutations at particular sites that can be relatively easily identified. By sampling the Y chromosome from men around the world the modern human diaspora can be mapped out both geographically and chronologically.

Spencer Wells is an American geneticist with impeccable credentials from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities and certainly knows his subject. Fortunately, he is also very good at explaining the science, which can be somewhat complicated at times. This fascinating and often surprising story originated as a television film and has benefited from being thoroughly worked out through first-hand experience around the world.

Accompanied by 24 pages of brilliant photos by Mark Read, an excellent list of further reading and an index, The Journey of Man is well worth getting to grips with. As Wells points out, each of us carries a unique chapter locked away inside our genome, and we owe it to ourselves and our descendants to discover what it is. Come on boys, this is our story and we ought to know the gist of it. Douglas Palmer

The Journey of Man is fascinating and oozes charm. . . . [It] is packed with important insights into our history and our relationships with each other. . . . Who needs literature when science is this much fun? -- Chris Lavers, The Guardian

Fortunately for the lay reader, Wells has a knack for clear descriptions and clever analogies to help explain the intricacies of the science involved. Both entertaining and enlightening. -- "Library Journal

Wells does an excellent job of making complex scientific data accessible and weaves a tapestry of physical anthropology and archaeology as well as linguistics and, of course, genetics to piece together the rise of the agricultural society, the interrelations between far-flung languages, and the eventual settlement of humans into virtually every corner of the globe. -- Elise Proulx, East Bay Express

Spencer Wells chronicles the history of genetic population studies, starting with Darwin's puzzlement over the diversity of humanity he saw first-hand from the deck of the Beagle, and ending with the various attempts to classify human variation on the basis of different political and social agendas. . . . Wells has an insider's knowledge of the science and its excitement. -- Rebecca Cann, Nature

The Journey of Man is the best account available of the story of human origins and dispersals. . . . This is a first-class account of a whole new approach to the human story that allows human population history to be reconstructed in an unexpected and convincing way. -- Colin Renfrew, The Times Higher Education Supplement

The Journey of Man is a book that should be read, for undeniably the story Wells reveals will transform our understanding of ourselves. -- Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

150,000 years ago, a human being, identical to us in all important respects, walked the soil of Africa. Every modern human being is descended from this one woman. How did she come to be mother to all of us - a real-life Eve? What happened to the descendants of other "Eves"? And why do we come in such a huge variety of sizes, shapes, types and races if we have just one prehistoric ancestor? In this book 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 has made it possible not just to discover where our ancestors lived (and who they fought, loved, learned from and influenced) but to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. Informed by this new science, "The Journey of Man" is packed with astonishing information: that there was a real Adam and Eve -but that Eve came first by some 90,000 years; that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers now found; how the male Y-chromosome has been used to accurately trace the spread of humanity from Africa to Eurasia; how mountain ranges literally split populations in half, resulting in different racial types; that Neanderthals have been shown once and for all not to be our ancestors but an evolutionary dead-end; 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 - relying not on archaeological or historical speculation but on analysis of human genetics to provide definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries. Questions which, in an age obsessed by our biological inheritance, are more compelling than ever.

"Written with much verve, easy to read, and up-to-date on many important developments."--Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Stanford University, author of The History and Geography of Human Genes and Genes, Peoples, and Languages.

"Spencer Wells, whose genetic work has contributed to our understanding of human prehistory, has provided the lay reader with an account of the spread and mixing of the human species from its origin in Africa that is both scientifically accurate and accessible to the nonscientist. In achieving that accessibility, he has not made the common error of confusing simple explanations with simplistic ones. Most important, Wells has the intellectual integrity, all too rare in popularizations of science, to distinguish what is really known from what is only speculation."--Richard Lewontin, Harvard University, author of It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Dr Spencer Wells is a UK-based geneticist, with visiting scientific appointments at Oxford University and Harvard School of Public Health.