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Title: Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes by Steve Olson ISBN: 0-618-09157-2 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 May, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.66 (29 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not bad quick overview, but too much political sermonizing
Comment: Using ever improving molecular techniques, population geneticists study the history of extended families that are inbred to some degree. In other words, they trace the genealogies of racial groups. It's an inherently fascinating subject, and science journalist Steve Olson introduces it adequately in his new book, Mapping Human History. Written in the breezy style of a National Geographic travel-log, Olson's book is a quick read, but a little too superficial to be intellectually satisfying. Still, it's not a bad overview of an important subject.
It would be better, though, without the recurrent political sermonizing. Unfortunately for population geneticists, their subject matter-race-is vastly unfashionable. So, the dean of the field, Stanford's great L.L. Cavalli-Sforza long ago developed the transparent subterfuge of defining the word "race" in the most ludicrous straw-man terms possible-as the classification of the human race into absolutely separate, never-overlapping, mutually exclusive categories. (Never specified is exactly who today believes such a thing: the Grand Kleagle's retarded brother, perhaps?) This straw-man definition allows him to deny that he's studying race, since by his definition "race" is impossible. Still, it allows Cavalli-Sforza to get back to work without being crucified for political incorrectness, so we shouldn't hold it against him.
Unfortunately, Olson never seems to grasp that this is just pro forma boilerplate. In his book, Olson stops every few pages to tell you that there are no races that have been absolutely isolated genetically since the beginning of time because-you will be shocked, shocked to learn this-humans have been known to outbreed. (The reality of course is that for any human racial group, the inbreeding glass is both part empty and part full.) This makes Mapping Human History rather like a geology book that repeatedly admonishes the reader that the Earth is not flat.
Another curious feature that Olson's book shares with many other contemporary writings about population genetics is the author's apparent longing for the abolition of his own subject matter via universal random interbreeding. Although animal and plant biodiversity is routinely celebrated as a supreme good, the conclusions of books on human biodiversity tend to treat it as a temporary evil that will soon be gone, and good riddance to it. It's as if that geology textbook ended with an ode to the blessed day when the Earth will plunge into the Sun, thus happily eliminating the need for a science of geology.
In his final chapter, "The End of Race," Olson cites Hawaii as exemplifying the future of the human race. Still, not even Hawaii has achieved racial nirvana. Despite interracial marriage blurring the ethnic boundaries, the Native Hawaiians are now campaigning hard to have themselves declared a sovereign nation like American Indian tribes.
On a vaster scale, Brazil exhibits the same tendency for class to correlate with color, and for the people at the bottom of the pile to agitate, not unreasonably, for race-based privileges for themselves. Currently, the government of Brazil is introducing racial quotas in response to black demands.
Further, the mixing of races often leads to new races rather than to no races, such as the Angles and Saxons became the Anglo-Saxons.
This notion that the entire world will soon consist of one beige race is both highly popular and highly dubious. I see little statistical evidence to suggest that there will be significantly greater racial admixture in either Asia or Africa anytime in the 21st Century ... and that's where most humans will live.
For example, the UN's best guess is that China will have 1,462 million people in 2050. The Chinese government shows no intention of ever admitting many immigrants, so the racial admixture level in China will not change perceptibly. The UN also projects that in 2050, India will have a population of 1,572 million. Almost all of these people will be racially descended from current Indians. Why? Well, who would want to move to India? It's a country that's more than full now, even before it adds another half billion Indians.
Other populous countries that-trust me-won't be attracting huge numbers of immigrants from other continents include Pakistan (344 million in 2050), Indonesia (311 million), Nigeria (279 million), Bangladesh (265 million), the Congo (204 million), and Yemen and Uganda (102 million each). In other words, the absolute numbers of racially distinct East Asians, blacks, and non-European Caucasians will be larger in 2050 than today.
Most of the growth in racial mixing will be restricted to regions where intermarriage has been a long tradition (primarily Latin America and some remote islands) or are immigrant magnets (presumably North America, Australia, and Western Europe).
In essence, what is so enthusiastically anticipated is the admixture of people of European descent. Evidently, there is something uniquely, even superhumanly potent and evil about European DNA that means it must be diluted. Strikingly, the greatest enthusiasts for this view tend to be highly European themselves. (Olson, for example, is blonde.) This reflects that weird combination of racial self-loathing and racial egotism found in so many white intellectuals.
Finally, I doubt that the beigeification of Europeans will proceed all that quickly. I don't think it's at all inevitable that Eastern Europe will open its borders to non-Europeans. Prudent statesmen in the ex-Communist countries will be wary of reproducing Western Europe's travails with hostile immigrant minorities, although the European Union will no doubt try to bully them into it.
So, the odds are that-on a global scale-the current races will remain at the end of this century almost as distinct as they are today. Then, beyond 2100, DNA engineering and, perhaps, interstellar colonization will likely radically increase genetic differences among humans.
So, while a better book than this one could certainly be written about race, you can feel confident that if you do invest the modest amount of time required to read Olson's effort, you don't have to worry that its subject matter will suddenly evaporate.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Fascinating Rebuttal Against Racism
Comment: Olson's "Mapping Human History" is written in a clear, easy to understand style that makes mitochondira, haplotypes and other archana of modern genetics fairly understandable to the lay reader.
Olson explains why most geneticists believe that modern humans, no matter how different they may seem, are biologically very similar. There is no room in this book for theories about how one "race" is somehow better than another--or even for the idea that the term "race" has any meaning at all. Our cultures may have divided us, but our DNA betrays the fact that we are all descended from a small group of modern humans who lived in eastern Africa about 100,000 years ago. There simply hasn't been enough time to make us dramatically different from each other, despite what racists would have us believe.
The theory that modern humans originated in Africa fairly recently and then spread throughout the world is still, of course, hotly debated. A number of reputable scientists favor the multiregional hypothesis, which claims that modern humans evolved in various places around the world from archaic populations already living in those regions. The mutliregional hypothesis implies that the differences between modern groups are deeply rooted in the very distant past. Olson clearly disagrees with that view, and he does a good job of presenting the genetic evidence that points to a more recent African origin (sometimes called the "Out of Africa II" hypothesis).
In the course of doing so, Olson touches on many interesting points. A few of the more striking were these:
First, Olson describes recent DNA research indicating that Neanderthals were in fact a different species from our own. This is another hotly debated proprosition, and I suspect that experts could criticize the DNA analysis that Olson describes on the grounds that it's pretty hard to make sense of 35,000 year old DNA. Still, Olson makes a good case that the new results are compelling and consistent with other evidence.
Second, Olson describes the Jewish tradition that the male descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses, will be the high priests of the Israelites. Genetic research among the kohanim (priests), who often have a surname like Cohen, Cohn, or Kahn, suggests that many of these persons are in fact descended from a common male ancestor, who may indeed have been Aaron.
Finally, Olson explains why everyone on the planet at this point probably has some genetic material contributed by Julius Caesar and Confucius, among others. It's a small world after all, at least as far as our DNA is concerned.
The only part of the book that I didn't enjoy were the last couple of chapters, which shift from the topic at hand (i.e., "mapping human history") to questions of ethics. While these issues are important, they are too complex to be explored well in the fifty or so pages that Olson alots to them, and the discussion tends to detract from the fascinating "deep history" that is the focus of the rest of the book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Book!
Comment: Steve Olson's Mapping Human History is an excellent introduction to historical genetics, and indeed it has been called by the New Scientist as "the most balanced, accessible and up-to-date survey of the field currently available." It is written by a renowned science journalist, not a scientist, who quotes and discusses the leaders in the field in a quite readable and entertaining fashion. The book has apparently offended some people by discounting ancestry (and racist offshoots) in light of the overwhelming evidence against the concept. However its scientific credentials are impeccable.
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