Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins [Paperback]

Thanks to recent discoveries in genetics, explains science journalist Olson, we're learning about human history before any history was written down.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Thanks to recent discoveries in genetics, explains science journalist Olson, we're learning about human history before any history was written down. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.  (Library Journal ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In a journey across four continents, acclaimed science writer Steve Olson traces the origins of modern humans and the migrations of our ancestors throughout the world over the past 150,000 years. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Mapping Human History is a groundbreaking synthesis of science and history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the latest genetic research, linguistic evidence, and archaeological findings, Olson reveals the surprising unity among modern humans and "demonstrates just how naive some of our ideas about our human ancestry have been" (Discover).Olson offers a genealogy of all humanity, explaining, for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius as forebears. Olson also provides startling new perspectives on the invention of agriculture, the peopling of the Americas, the origins of language, the history of the Jews, and more. An engaging and lucid account, Mapping Human History will forever change how we think about ourselves and our relations with others.

Steve Olson has worked for the National Academy of Sciences, the White House Office of Science and Technology, and the Institute for Genomic Research. A science journalist with more than twenty years of experience, he is the author of several books, including Shaping the Future and Biotechnology, and has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Science, and other magazines.