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Richard Dawkins

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life Hardcover – 2 Sept. 2004

by Prof Richard Dawkins (Author), Yan Wong (Author)

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THE ANCESTOR'S TALE is a pilgrimage back through time; a journey on which we meet up with fellow pilgrims as we and they converge on our common ancestors. Chimpanzees join us at about 6 million years in the past, gorillas at 7 million years, orang utans at 14 million years, as we stride on together, a growing band. The journey provides the setting for a collection of some 40 tales. Each explores an aspect of evolutionary biology through the stories of characters met along the way or glimpsed from afar - the Elephant Bird's Tale, the Marsupial Mole's Tale, the Lungfish's Tale. Together they give a deep understanding of the processes that have shaped life on Earth: convergent evolution, the isolation of populations, continental drift, the great extinctions. The tales are interspersed with prologues detailing the journey, route maps showing joining lineages, and life-like reconstructions of our common ancestors. THE ANCESTOR'S TALE represents a pilgrimage on an unimaginable scale: our goal is four billion years away, and the number of pilgrims joining us grows vast - ultimately encompassing all living creatures. At the end of the journey lies something remarkable in its simplicity and transformative power: the first, humble, replicating molecules.

Print length

528 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date

2 Sept. 2004
Dimensions

20.5 x 2.8 x 25.2 cm
ISBN-10

0297825038
ISBN-13

978-0297825036
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Product description

Amazon Review

Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. Surprisingly, it is one that many otherwise literate people are largely unaware of. Hopefully Dawkins's name and well deserved reputation as a best selling writer will introduce them to this wonderful saga.

The Ancestor's Tale takes us from our immediate human ancestors back through what he calls concestors, those shared with the apes, monkeys and other mammals and other vertebrates and beyond to the dim and distant microbial beginnings of life some 4 billion years ago. It is a remarkable story which is still very much in the process of being uncovered. And, of course from a scientist of Dawkins stature and reputation we get an insider's knowledge of the most up-to-date science and many of those involved in the research. And, as we have come to expect of Dawkins, it is told with a passionate commitment to scientific veracity and a nose for a good story. Dawkins's knowledge of the vast and wonderful sweep of life's diversity is admirable. Not only does it encompass the most interesting living representatives of so many groups of organisms but also the important and informative fossil ones, many of which have only been found in recent years.

Dawkins sees his journey with its reverse chronology as cast in the form of an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past [and] all roads lead to the origin of life. It is, to my mind, a sensible and perfectly acceptable approach although some might complain about going against the grain of evolution. The great benefit for the general reader is that it begins with the more familiar present and the animals nearest and dearest to usour immediate human ancestors. And then it delves back into the more remote and less familiar past with its droves of lesser known and extinct fossil forms. The whole pilgrimage is divided into 40 tales, each based around a group of organisms and discusses their role in the overall story. Genetic, morphological and fossil evidence is all taken into account and illustrated with a wealth of photos and drawings of living and fossils forms, evolutionary and distributional charts and maps through time, providing a visual compliment and complement to the text. The design also allows Dawkins to make numerous running comments and characteristic asides. There are also numerous references and a good index.-- Douglas Palmer

Review

In this extraordinary book, Dawkins turns chronicler. He does so with a clever twist that avoids the perennial problem of evolutionary history-telling ... As a contribution to the history of ideas this book is well worthy of Britain's top public intellectual. The arguments are as sharply honed as we have come to expect from Dawkins (Matt Ridley Guardian)

THE ANCESTOR'S TALE achieves the almost impossible: it makes biology interesting again (Steve Jones)

One of the richest accounts of evolution ever written (Financial Times)

Should be given to all young persons starting out on their exploration of the world. It will excite their curiosity and awe and prove to them that the world is inexhaustible in its fascination (Sunday Telegraph)

No other book I have read has given me such a dizzyingly immediate sense of the vastness and strangeness of the changes brought about by evolution over the eons, or how intimately all life is bound together ... THE ANCESTOR'S TALE makes you feel you have seen the world in a fresh, exhilarating way (Robert Hanks Daily Telegraph)

fabulous in many ways...... lavishly illustrated and brilliantly signposted, with something to amaze on every page, it will be a hard book for non-scientists to put down. (John Cornwell THE SUNDAY TIMES)

As a contribution to the history of ideas this book is well worthy of Britain's top public intellectual. The arguements are as sharply honed as we have come to expect from Dawkins. (Matt Ridley GUARDIAN)

'one of the richest accounts of evolution ever written........the tales of the pilgrims dart around with a delightful unpredictability, propelled like a firecracker by Dawkin's wonderful way with words. He is so good at explaining complex scientific issues that readers will learn painlessly about matters well outside the author's field of evolutionary biology from maths to cosmology.....we have no right to expect (another) magnum opus on the scale of THE ANCESTOR'S TALE.' (FINANCIAL TIMES)

huge, magisterial and didactic (Richard Wentk FOCUS MAGAZINE)

A book which tries, with much brilliance and some success, to treat our vaunted humanity as no more than a tiny episode in a vast drama, equivalent to a couple of seconds of madness at the end of a very long day. (Jonathan Ree THE EVENING STANDARD)

As always with Dawkins, the writing is beautiful: economical, vivid and often, both elegant and witty. (John Burnside THE SCOTSMAN)

His book, however, should be given to all intelligent young persons starting out on their exploration of the world. It will excite their curiosity and awe and prove to them that the world is inexhaustible in its fascination. (Anthony Daniels THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

A new chronicle of life, wonderfully illustrated, from this great evolutionist. (THE ECONOMIST)

THE ANCESTOR'S TALE makes you feel you have seen the world in a fresh, exhilarating way. (Robert Hanks THE DAILY TELEGRAPH)

a monumental book. (Dick Ahlstrom THE IRISH TIMES)

In this book Dawkins brings together many of the ideas he has put forward elsewhere into a coherent and elegant whole. (Crispin Tickell LITERARY REVIEW)

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 1st edition (2 Sept. 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0297825038
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0297825036
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 20.5 x 2.8 x 25.2 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 388,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 341 in Genetics in Popular Science
- 356 in Genetics (Books)
- 1,144 in Biological Evolution

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4.6 538 ratings

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Richard Dawkins

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Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

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Paul Macdonald

A highly recommendable example of popular science

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 28 July 2008

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Essentially a history book, albiet one which long out-spans the barely significant spectrum of human history, Richard Dawkins explores our universal family tree, delving in to the past sufficiently deeply to expose what our ancestors must have looked and behaved like; from morphologically-recognisable hominoids, through to animals we would think entirely remote from ourselves, and at last to ancient, uni-cellular beings.
The welcome way in which Dawkins presents this ancestory is by way of a 'pilgrimage'; modern man moves backwards through time, along with every other living organism; and at special epochs in antiquity (from our perspective, at least) we and and another modern pilgrim 'rendezvous' where we share a common ancestor, and at each rendezvous point, the modern pilgrim(s) relates his 'tale', which is usually an essay (of sorts) on some area of evolution, by the author - Dawkins doesn't have the pilgrims themselves telling the stories. It's a quirky and lucid way of presenting the history of life on Earth.

After this lenghty treatment of Evolutionary Biology, Dawkins's recognition as an author capable of writing accessible science is surely intact; my own level of Biological education is still at secondary school level (AS-Level), and I found the majority of the book perfectly comprehendible; he is an emminently articulate writer who makes fairly complex subjects understandable for lay-persons.
Having said that, there are areas of the book which are really rather challenging, and strain the limits of what is classifiable as 'popular' science; I still haven't plucked up the courage to tackle the Gibbon's Tale, and there are similar examples strewn across the 630 pages of this tome; at best Dawkins can be an inspiring, up-lifting and thoroughly entertaining writer who's enthusiasm shimmers in his lovely prose; at worst, the complex nature of some of his Tale's can render his writing rather frustrating and incomprehensible; but, ultimately, the cause of this (as far as I can gather) is deficiency on the part of the reader (incidently, it seems that the most difficult parts of the text are invaribly those co-written by Dawkins' assistent, Yan Wong).

Some reviewers elsewhere have said that this book has been overly politicised by Dawkins; I don't see much reason to support this; there is one tale, The Grasshopper's Tale which is almost exclusively political (it deals with the 'vexed and sensitive topic of race'), but aside from this, political outbursts occur rather infrequently, and I rather think they colour the book positively, even though I don't always agree with Dawkins.
It would be a tall order for a 630-page nonfiction book to consistently sustain the reader's interest, and The Ancestor's Tale doesn't quite succeed; there are areas which feel quite flabby and impoverished of real, memorable import, lenghty descriptions of various animals, and discussions about specifics such as animal classification, whilst necessary, are mind-numbingly boring.

Having read the shorter and far less challenging 'The Selfish Gene', I must conclude that his 1976 publication was a more entertaining read, and, really, a better book; however, The Ancestor's Tale is an immensely readable and commendable work, and has some of the greatest passages of popular science I've read, The Beaver's Tale is a superb example, and one of many. Occasionaly difficult, ultimately rewarding and deeply affecting, The Ancestor's Tale, is a worth while read.

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Magic Lemur

AUDIO CD Review: The same notes but a different symphony (& BOOK review: Imagine No Religion)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 7 September 2008

Verified Purchase

I'm a lazy reader and tend to 'cheat-read' books by getting the audio CD version, which has the virtue of being quicker and good for car journeys. In this case however, I have BOTH read AND listened to the book since the author had the foresight to provide good versions of both (which is surprisingly rare). Hence I have two reviews - this one and 'Imagine no Religion' (see below).

The first thing that struck me about these CD's is that they are different to the book. Not only are they abridged but the language is changed to emphasize different points and to be more palatable to the ear. With reading the book, a lot of the stuff flew over my head (e.g. Cholanoflagellates) and I'm glad such things are abridged here.

The second is the presence of Lalla Ward, who seems to cover the large quotations Dawkins often uses in his works and also seems to read the more technical (or rather more mundane) parts of the tales. Having listened to the whole of Origin of Species , I am thankful that the narrator varies a bit as occasionally Dawkins can read things as known that are unknown to his wife (& so read differently).

In terms of content there is still the rich variety of tales (including my favourite: the Duck-billed Platypus) and I can only recall a few interesting Gambits which have been left out (e.g. Eve evolving 40,000 years before Adam & the Paedomorphosis of Man story).

My one criticism is that the Ancestor's tale is very detailed and involves lots of left-brain work. If you are listening to this in a car (or even typing a review!) then it is hard to fully follow the reasoning. Maybe this is because Men can't multi-task, but I'd be bold enough to suggest that even women may find this difficult...

To conclude then, audio CD's are often overlooked as a medium and it is to this one's credit that it is adapted to the ear, just as the book is adapted to the eye. If you know of anyone who hasn't read the book then I'd suggest giving them this as a starter, and the hard backed version of the book (with its shiny pictures) as a main course. As one of my fellow reviewers says: 1 copy of this book should be given to every member of mankind, to put the doubts about evolution to rest. Whatever you can do to play your part is to your credit.

***Imagine No Religion****

Having read 3 or 4 Dawkins books, I get the distinct impression that he majors on 2 subjects: atheism and evolutionary biology. The great virtue of this book is that Dawkins is waxing lyrical about something he loves rather than something he hates (bar the final chapter) and hence shows what a great scientist he really is.

Whether this was intentional or not is hard to fathom but I feel that his magnum opus is Biology and the beauty of the wording combined with the immense depth of his research remind you of the flipside to this book - The God Delusion .

Before I started this book I was skeptical as to evolution and didn't believe in Bio or Abiogenesis. Since I have read it, I have found the measured tone and skillful combating of creationism in this book have won me over and I'm am now a far bigger fan of his than I was before.

Of course, there is the last chapter where the supernatural is derided as not adding to the beauty of evolution. But even this chapter is measured and subtle, rather than polemnical.

As the cliche goes: if you don't believe in evolution, read this [Dawkins] book. But further to this, if you think Dawkins is Satan's son and is not an excellent scientist, then this book should also be top of your reading list rather than the latest CS Lewis...

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The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life Hardcover – 2 Sept. 2004

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