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Title: The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey Out of Africa by Stephen Oppenheimer ISBN: 0-7867-1192-2 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Pub. Date: July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Tracing the beachcombers
Comment: Calling Stephen Oppenheimer a "young turk" may be a bit thin. However, his iconoclastic assault on the dogma of human global diaspora is challenging. Without overstressing it, he uses the title to trash even older dogmas. To his credit, he refrains from personal assaults as he lays out the evidence genetics provides in tracing our prehistory. In all, he manages to show how a new science is providing answers to old questions. Where did modern humanity rise? How and when did it spread over the planet to occupy nearly every available niche? What kind of future does this imply for our species?
None of these questions is easily resolved, as Oppenheimer stresses often. With earlier answers based on the imperfect fossil record, on which many fine careers have been built, offering new responses takes courage. In anthropology, the response had better have good evidence in support. His support is impressive, reaching back through time and space to our earliest origins in Africa. From there he demonstrates that our Eurocentric view of ourselves needs serious revision. Humanity reached Europe late in our migrations. European humanity didn't invent "art", agriculture didn't arise in the Fertile Crescent spreading to girdle the globe, and Native Americans likely settled the Western Hemisphere prior to the last great Ice Age.
Oppenheimer relies on two newly-developed tools in his analysis: mitochondrial DNA and mutations in the Y chromosome. Mitochondrial DNA [mtDNA], the marker handed down from mother to daughter, has already pointed to a common ancestor to us all. Living in Africa about 150 thousand years ago, she's been [regrettably] dubbed the Mitochondrial Eve. The author deplores this appellation, but accepts its nearly universal usage. The Y chromosome, passed on to sons, is a firmer marker for location, if less precise in time. He uses both to trace a new migration route for humanity. The route is along the southern shoreline from Africa, across India's triangular coastline to Southeast Asia and Australia. He reminds us that the Australian Aborigines have the longest uninterrupted heritage of all humans. Yet, he notes, they are the same as the rest of us in all important features.
The coastal route, guided by mountain ranges and ice incursions, resulted in some unexpected revelations about that European viewpoint. Instead of creeping around the eastern Mediterranean to populate Europe, these migrants, "beachcombers" in his word, entered from the Asian steppes to the east. Already inhabited by the Neandertals, this invasion ultimately displaced the indigenous population - a depressingly familiar story. Marshalling the research done over the past few years, including the genetics, the rise and fall of the seas due to ice trapping the water, and tying it to the available fossil evidence, Oppenheimer revises a century of theories. It's an exemplary summary of current research while pointing out the work remaining to be done.
To many, the most interesting chapter is the contentious field of "the Peopling of the Americas". It is here that Oppenheimer introduces some of the disputants. The issue of who emigrated to the Western Hemisphere is tightly meshed with when it occurred. The "Clovis point" stone tools, long considered the benchmark in palaeoanthropology, is sharply challenged by both fossil and genetic evidence. The genetic picture is made up of four basic branches traceable, according to the author, to Japan and eastern China. These people, he stresses, didn't flow into North America from there, however. Instead, they took up residence in a "temporary continent" - Beringia - that formed when the ice lowered sea levels.
Oppenheimer's knowledge of the research processes is clearly imparted to readers. He explains how the new science of phylogeography starts at a "twig of the molecular tree" and can trace back through time and place on a map. The map shows our wanderings, and he gives us the maps to illustrate them. He supplies diagrams of the molecular relationships acting as guides. To complete the picture, he also provides environmental charts showing how migrations were guided by changing climate. It's a vivid, complete picture, with few flaws or omissions. In fact, the only complaint i can offer about this book is the references, which are integrated in the Notes at the back of the book. To garner a list of his sources, you must read the Notes as closely as you do the main text. It's not a chore you should shun, but the cross-referencing is tedious. A tiny blemish, it detracts nothing from the book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 5
Summary: Upgrading "Out of Africa" theory
Comment: As a critic of Darwinian theory I always get frustrated by the presumption that current biology has a correct theory of the descent of humans. At one and the same time research is proceeding rapidly and the amount of new data appearing is amazing, as this highly readable book testifies. Challenging current orthodoxy the author proposes a new version of the single exodus theory, based on the tidal wave of new knowledge of mitochondrial dna. While assessing all the fine details of the author's account is not easy for a non-specialist, the overall thesis is highly cogent, interesting, a sort of must-read as the debate between the multi-regionalists and the "Out of Africa" proponents takes a quantum leap in favor of the latter.
Something doesn't add up in Darwinian theory, and I am always brain-fatigued by having to compensate for wrong thinking in action as one gets new data filtered through the Darwin mindset. That's not so hard in this case, but one is left wondering at the greater implications of these findings. We don't really see the evolution of man in his diasporas, instead a whole new set of humans keeps appearing ready to go from somewhere in Africa. What's really going on here? The evolution of man is still the mystery it always was, but this book manages to move the subject into some new terrain and is well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best popular book of its kind
Comment: Oppenheimer's book is without doubt the best of the genre that has emerged that is reporting upon the results of the Human Genome Diversity Project. Focussing exclusively upon the male Y chromosome and the female Mitochondrial DNA, it enables us to trace not just our own parentage, but that of every human on Earth. Combining paleoclimatic data as well, Oppenheimer goes a step further than "The Seven Daughters of Eve" and "The Journeys of Man". Its only weakness is that Oppenheimer seems too hung-up on his Flood = Sunda Shelf = Austronesian thesis (but it doesn't protrude too much). He also is very critical (not completely justifiably) of the linguistic work of Greenberg and Ruhlen.
For those of you wanting to "Know Thyself" this is definitely up there with Carvalli Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genetics".
Regards
John
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Title: The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey by Spencer Wells, Mark Read ISBN: 069111532X Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson ISBN: 0618352104 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of the Southeast Asia by Stephen Oppenheimer ISBN: 0753806797 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Publishing Pub. Date: 01 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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Title: The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes ISBN: 0393323145 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title:The Real Eve ASIN: B00006AUH1 Publisher: Lionsgate/Fox Pub. Date: 20 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $17.98 |
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