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Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (2006)

af Nicholas Wade

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MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingSamtaler / Omtaler
1,0674118,949 (4.06)1 / 102
Based on a groundbreaking synthesis of recent scientific findings, critically acclaimed New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade tells a bold and provocative new story of the history of our ancient ancestors and the evolution of human nature. Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings--driven by revelations discovered in the human genome--has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors--the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization. Sure to stimulate lively controversy, he makes the case for novel arguments about many hotly debated issues such as the evolution of language and race and the genetic roots of human nature, and reveals that human evolution has continued even to today. In wonderfully lively and lucid prose, Wade reveals the answers that researchers have ingeniously developed to so many puzzles: When did language emerge? When and why did we start to wear clothing? How did our ancestors break out of Africa and defeat the more physically powerful Neanderthals who stood in their way? Why did the different races evolve, and why did we come to speak so many different languages? When did we learn to live with animals and where and when did we domesticate man's first animal companions, dogs? How did human nature change during the thirty-five thousand years between the emergence of fully modern humans and the first settlements? This will be the most talked about science book of the season.… (mere)
  1. 30
    Children of the Ice Age: How a Global Catastrophe Allowed Humans to Evolve af Steven M. Stanley (br77rino)
    br77rino: Excellent discussion of the climate change in Africa, from continuous forest home to spotty forest/savannah home, nudging our East African ape ancestors to come down from the trees and evolve into walkers.
  2. 10
    Vejen til verden af i dag af Jared Diamond (stevetempo, IslandDave)
    stevetempo: Read together they make an excellent contrast.
  3. 00
    The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution af Sean B. Carroll (ColumbusLee)
  4. 00
    Arternes Oprindelse ved Udvælgelse eller ved de heldigst stillede Formers Sejr i Kampen for Tilværelsen af Charles Darwin (ColumbusLee)
  5. 00
    Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships af Christopher Ryan (nsblumenfeld)
  6. 00
    Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past af David Reich (themulhern)
    themulhern: Similar themes, different treatment. Reich's is more recent.
  7. 00
    Dance of the Tiger af Björn Kurtén (themulhern)
    themulhern: One is a popular retelling of one interpretation of what the science tells us, in 2006, about human migrations and human interactions with now extinct humans, the other is a fictional exploration of the same idea, from the 70s.
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 75 Books Challenge for 2014: Before the Dawn - SRH group read19 ulæste / 19jjwilson61, maj 2017

» Se også 102 omtaler

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As interesting as it was I had to work really hard to keep my attention on it. ( )
  jskeltz | Nov 23, 2023 |
I tried to listen to this multiple times, but never really got into it. Since Wade wrote his COVID essay, though, he is a more interesting person, so I decided to give the book another go. Continued to have trouble, now I'm reading it at the same time as I'm listening to it, and it makes much more sense. Unfortunately, the writing is uninspired, so, while the subject is interesting, it ends up being a bit of a slog. The plan is to return refreshed later.
  themulhern | Mar 19, 2023 |
High 4.

One nice thing about journalists who write science books? The books are generally well-written. (I'm looking at you, [a:Chris Stringer|103433|Chris Stringer|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-09ae6e5eb554f8a5ab0515c05488ea34.png], who's [b:The Origin of Our Species|11731574|The Origin of Our Species|Chris Stringer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333753409s/11731574.jpg|17086110] I read before this.)

Another nice thing is that, not being scientists, they have less of a horse in the race, so they tend to write more purely to inform and are willing to discuss some of the less accepted theories. Mr. Wade does a great job on both fronts.

The first half and change of this book discusses human evolution and what happened when geneticists entered the fray. The application of genetics to the field has been revolutionary to say the least. The revolution is not limited to the biological side of things either. The techniques of genetics are being applied to the origins and evolution of language as well.

In many cases the results butt up against long-held positions in the field. The results are predictable: some embrace the new, others dig their heels in and cling to the old. Wade does a good job of discussing this in both the biological realm and the linguistic. This, in particular the development of language and modernity occupy the next quarter or so of the book.

In the last quarter he moves past the dawn to address the issues of our continuing evolution and applications of techniques developed to historical situations: genetic studies of disease in isolated or insular populations - e.g. Icelanders and Jews - and the progeny of Genghis Kahn and Thomas Jefferson. This is definitely fascinating stuff, but I think would be better off in a separate book where it could be covered more fully. ( )
  qaphsiel | Feb 20, 2023 |
Absolutely fascinating book about the dawn of man. The book traces the travels of the human race after groups of them left the great rift Valley of Africa. ( )
  JBGUSA | Jan 2, 2023 |
Nicholas Wade discusses how the growing science of genetics expands and deepens our understanding of human evolution, our relationship to our closest relatives, and how we became the species we are--and what we might become in the future.

There's a lot of ground to cover, and this is a survey, not a textbook. It's very well-referenced, but in some cases he's relying on cutting edge research that, inevitably, will not all hold up. He also ventures into some touchy areas that not all readers will be comfortable or happy with. Nevertheless, it's an excellent, informative, and thought-provoking book that is well worth reading.
One of the topics covered here is the often-surprising path of human migration and expansion out of Africa. Just one major human lineage, L3, left Africa, and it's from that lineage that all the sub-lineages that populate the rest of the globe are descended. Human migration went eastward and along the coastlines, to India, southeast Asia, and Australia before going northward and westward. He repeatedly emphasizes that dates derived from genetic mutation rates are approximate and need to be evaluated in conjunction with archaeological evidence. That said, he gives us a fascinating picture of how archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence interact to give us a much fuller, richer, more complete picture of human evolution.

Among the conventional assumptions overturned by the growing body of evidence is the notion of early human hunter-gatherer bands as peaceful people, living in harmony with other humans they encountered, with war as an invention of sedentary societies after the invention of agriculture. In fact the evidence points the other way: hunter-gatherer bands, even today, are very violent societies, frequently raiding their neighbors and as much as 30% of the population dying by violence. Our nearest relatives, the common chimpanzees, are even more violent, not only raiding other troops and killing any member of another troop found alone, but also handling most internal disputes including leadership disputes by violence. Permanent settlements, with higher population density and less ability to move away from neighboring individuals or groups you didn't get along with, required an increase in human sociability, and willingness and ability to cooperate even with unrelated individuals, in order to work. And the archaeological evidence shows that agriculture came after that point, a result rather than a cause.

Humans have been domesticating each other, along with domesticating other species, and the typical experience of violence in settled, developed societies is much, much less and decreasing compared to "more natural" hunter-gatherer societies. The human ability to cooperate with unrelated strangers, routinely and on a large scale, is simply unknown in other species. Some readers will be disturbed by that argument. Others will be disturbed by the case that Wade makes that one of our evolved mechanisms for making this cooperation possible is religion.

I'm not going to go on, touching on every issue Wade discusses. This is an excellent, highly readable book, laying out all we've learned about our past in recent years, due to the advance of genetics. Because he does rely on research that, in 2006, was very new and cutting-edge, some of what he says will prove to be wrong--but there's still a lot to learn here, and well worth your time.

Highly recommended.

I borrowed this book from a friend. ( )
1 stem LisCarey | Sep 19, 2018 |
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Genetics & Genesis


It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Travel back into the human past, and the historical evidence is plentiful enough for the first couple of hundred years, then rapidly diminishes. At the 5,000-year mark written records disappear altogether, yielding to the wordless witness of archaeological sites. Going farther back, even these become increasingly rare over the next 10,000 years, fading almost to nothing by 15,000 years ago, the date of the first human settlements. Before that time, people lived a nomadic existence based on hunting and gathering. They built nothing and left behind almost nothing of permanence, save a few stone tools and the remarkable painted caves of Europe.
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In every population of the world, women's skin colour is 3 to 4% lighter than Men's, perhaps through sexual selection by men, and perhaps because of mothers' greater needs for vitamin D.
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Based on a groundbreaking synthesis of recent scientific findings, critically acclaimed New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade tells a bold and provocative new story of the history of our ancient ancestors and the evolution of human nature. Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings--driven by revelations discovered in the human genome--has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors--the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization. Sure to stimulate lively controversy, he makes the case for novel arguments about many hotly debated issues such as the evolution of language and race and the genetic roots of human nature, and reveals that human evolution has continued even to today. In wonderfully lively and lucid prose, Wade reveals the answers that researchers have ingeniously developed to so many puzzles: When did language emerge? When and why did we start to wear clothing? How did our ancestors break out of Africa and defeat the more physically powerful Neanderthals who stood in their way? Why did the different races evolve, and why did we come to speak so many different languages? When did we learn to live with animals and where and when did we domesticate man's first animal companions, dogs? How did human nature change during the thirty-five thousand years between the emergence of fully modern humans and the first settlements? This will be the most talked about science book of the season.

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