Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization [Hardcover]

I have to hand it to Spencer Wells. He's a master at explaining scientific data and making a subject that might seem dry and academic come alive. In Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization he takes on the topic of early man's transition from hunter-gatherer to an argicultural basis 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic revolution. Using his background in population genetics, Wells makes the case that in opting for the settled lives of farmers our early ancestors set us on a path toward civilization.

Little did our ancestors know that along with farming, they were also sowing the seeds of overpopulation, disease, obesity, mental illness, climate change and even violent fundamentalism. At least according to Pandora's Seed.

I enjoyed the early chanpters of this book where Wells discussed early man. His points about farming and early urbanization are clearly made, as are his ideas that the plentiful supply of food that could be grown rather than searched for set the stage for the development of diseases like diabetes. But as he delved into other topics it seemed like his ideas were less based on science and more on conjecture. I first noticed this in his chapter on mental illness, but it carried through the rest of the book.

By the time I finished the chapters on climate change and religious fundamentalism it felt like Wells was stretching his ideas almost to the breaking point. Granted, he didn't say anything I disagree with; but it was starting to feel less like science and more like an agenda.

Wells has much of interest to say. I just wish he'd be a little more clear when he's speaking for science and when he's speaking for himself.

The Economist magazine has suggested that if humanity has a "historian-in-chief" it is Spencer Wells, one of the foremost practitioners applying population genetics to refine our understanding of distant human history. That sets a rather high expectation for Pandora's Seed.

Wells builds on the basic evolutionary idea that when the environment changes not all of the genes suitable for the previous environment necessarily remain advantageous. The greatest disruption of this sort in the past 50,000 years, he believes, was when humans began growing their own food about 10,000 years ago, the development of agriculture. Of course, our ancestors had no idea of the long-term consequences of their choices as they began to domesticate plants and animals.

Wells emphasizes those consequences that were not so good. For instance, he argues, human health suffered. For both males and females, longevity, average height, and pelvic indices deteriorated from where they were in Paleolithic times (30,000 to 9,000 years ago) and did not recover until the nineteenth century. "Ultimately, nearly every single major disease affecting modern human populations whether bacterial, viral, parasitic, or noncommunicable has its roots in the mismatch between our biology and the world we have created since the advent of agriculture," he contends.

Wells carries the argument through to current times, although he attends little to the intervening cultural history. He would like us to be more conscious of the "transgenerational" effects of the choices we make as they pertain to, for instance, the health and ethical issues involved in genetic engineering, our impacts on global warming, probable future reliance on aquaculture, and so on. With greater capacity to alter life forms and environments than ever before, "More and more, we are coming to realize that tinkering with nature can produce unintended effects, even if the tinkering seems well planned and justified."

The biological perspective on history has proven bountiful in recent years. In this case Wells begins by covering new genetic evidence of the biological transformations associated with the shift to agriculture. He draws on scholarly publications not typically read by non-specialists, performing a service for general readers. But then he turns to information and points of view that many of his readers will have heard often before. A substantial part of the book relies on material previously accessible in various broadly popular works (Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Bill McKibben, James Howard Kunstler, William McNeill, and Jared Diamond, for example, feature in the bibliography).

Wells set out to delineate the costs of civilization and not the benefits. Having such a one-sided but transparent objective is fair enough, but it should not relieve the author of the responsibility for critical scrutiny of the evidence. Thus it is bothersome that he glamorizes hunter-gatherer life, suggesting that these societies met material needs, had ample leisure time, were egalitarian, were not acquisitive, and were generally non-violent -- civilization ostensibly spoiled all of this. He is aware of at least some of the important contrary anthropological findings, but he glosses over them in order to buttress his theme.

It is no surprise that Wells does not go so far as to advocate reversion to hunter-gatherer culture -- it would be shocking (and more gripping) if he did (like Paul Shepard, for instance). Instead, he is "merely pointing out that we can learn something about the state of modern society from those ancestors." Well, of course, but this conclusion seems rather tepid after all the build-up.

Wells (or his editor) deserves credit for striving to make the book reader-friendly. However, a couple of the devices employed for this purpose generate at best only mixed results. Each chapter begins with an account of Wells visiting some particular place. In certain instances this works to humanize the subject, as in his story of the efforts of a Derbyshire, England couple to save their son afflicted with a serious genetic disease. But certain of these vignettes come across as merely gratuitous -- his visit to Dollywood adds no particular insight to his discussion of modern obesity, for example.

There are more than a dozen charts, mostly easy to interpret. Again, though, a few do not work so well (for example, legends obscured by small print and colors washed out in the transformation to black and white).

Pandora's Seed conveys commendable messages pertaining to human fate and that of our planet, though no truly fresh ones. It does so imperfectly, not quite clearing the high bar I had set for it when I first picked it up.

The enormous change brought about by the invention of agriculture is well documented. As Spencer Wells says in his book, Pandora's Seed, the transition to permanent settlements led "from villages to cities, which joined in empires with written records to pass on to future generations. What before was lost to posterity or decayed into vague myth was now written in stone." Numerous authors have dealt with this historical transition and its impact. (Probably one of the best such books is Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.) Mr Wells however has added a significant new dimension to the analysis. Humans guided the evolution of the plants and animals that they domesticated, but there is now genetic evidence that shows that humans were in turn themselves affected by these changes. Geneticists have now discovered numerous recent mutations to the human genome which resulted from the abrupt change in our environment and our diet. The story which the author develops explains in detail both the scope of these changes and the fact that the impact of those genetic mutations and the dramatic shift in the human environment is still unfolding. He goes on to consider the potential future impact of the tools which geneticists have now developed, which could permit designer children as in the movie Gattica. Thus the initial chapters of the book are powerful and enormously important.

Mr Wells is best when he is talking about genetic science, which he knows in depth. However, he also tackles issues such as our contemporary environmental challenge, psychiatric disorders and religious fundamentalism. I found these secondary discussions interesting in terms of the questions that are raised but ultimately they remain rather shallow and simplistic. For example he writes at length about the conflict between science and religion (or as he terms it mythos vs. logos) but he ends up sitting on the fence. I accept the dilemma that humans seek meaning as well as knowledge. But we need to take a position so as to sift away the myths of the past that frequently impair rather than enhance our capacity for adapting to the challenges of the contemporary world. Ultimately, as Karen Armstrong has written, humans will always tell myths just as they produce art. But the beauty of art (pun intended) is that art can provide meaning and depth to our lives without the risk of confusing it with knowledge or truth. Again Mr Wells analyzes the problem but leaves us stranded without direction.

In the final chapter the author summarizes the issues which suggest humanity is on an unsustainable and catastrophic course. He then proposes a `solution' by suggesting that we need to learn to `want less.' As a rallying call this slogan makes sense. But again it is a rather hollow call. The only realistic way we might bring about such a major change in the course of history is via regulation (and global regulation at that). The road to this goal will be arduous and will require that we build consensus, while defeating misplaced ideas and beliefs. Mr Wells has left us with just the slogan and no further practical guidance. But it is an important an important start and Pandora's Seed is an important book despite my few critical comments.

David Hillstrom
Author of The Bridge

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