"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
Publisher Web Site, December, 2003
Summary
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.
Spencer Wells was formerly head of the population genetics research group at Oxford University's Wellcome Trust
Centre for Human Genetics and is currently a consultant to the biotechnology industry. The writer and presenter
of the science film The Journey of Man, he has been a consulting scientist for several other film productions.