The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution Paperback – Oct 19 2010

I wasn't sure if this book deserved a 5 star or a 4 star rating. It could go either way, and I'd like to give it a 4.5, but I settled on 4 as a conservative rating.

1- The idea (hypothesis) that humans have continued to evolve over the last 10,000 years is a powerful idea well worth exploring. Traditional human evolutionary thought suggests that once agriculture and civilization rolled around, we pretty much stayed as we were because culture kept shifting too quickly for us to adapt to any particular environment. Not so suggest Cochran and Harpending. They point to persistent changes in the environment that could be associated with significant differences in fitness (e.g., lactose tolerance). Clearly, mortality rates remained significant until the 20th Century, so there's probably a lot of meat on this theoretical bone. Certainly, I'm very sympathetic to their argument that human evolution didn't freeze 20-40K years ago. Perhaps, and I mean perhaps, there wasn't time for random mutations to come up with complex adaptations. But there certainly was plenty of time for simple, but important mutations to occur, as well as for the frequency and activation of existing genes to radically change. This is an idea that more evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, historians, and human theorists need to consider more carefully.

2- Unfortunately, there isn't yet a ton of data to support their theoretical assertion. At least, not a lot of clear-cut behavioral data supported by clear genetic and historical data. Cochran and Harpending present a lot of circumstantial evidence that is compelling, but we (not just them) simply don't have the level of data at this point to make an iron-tight case for recent evolution. They do give an excellent example using the Ashkenazi Jews higher intelligence (due to a period of reproductive isolation and selection for intelligence) combined with a host of negative genetic side-effects. And the recent genetic mapping exercises appear to show a surprising amount of changes in the human genome within the last 10,000 years. So this isn't an idea that is built on pure speculation. The basic evidence is there, we just need to flesh it out.

So this is a book about an excellent idea that I'm very confident will gather more and more steam as the data comes in. At this point, the book is somewhat speculative, but there is at least enough data to make it worth anyone interested in human evolution seriously considering the authors' hypothesis. On top of that, it's a fast, easy, and interesting read, so I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in human history and/or evolution.

Did evolution simply stop 10,000 years ago? Of course not. Evolution is a continuous process. Sometimes it moves more quickly than other times. When a species' environment changes, the species is likely to evolve to meet the new circumstances. About 10,000 years ago, humans began shifting from hunting and gathering to farming. That changed nearly everything about our environment. We ate different foods, including grains and milk. We also started living in the same place, rather than roaming. Perhaps most importantly, we began to live in larger groups, which means we had to learn to get along differently and we became subject to different kinds of diseases. All of these changes in circumstances changed us. Different environments favor different genes, and we began the process of adjusting to a new life, a process that goes on to this day. This book tells that story in a lively and informative way. Highly recommended.

This theme I've seen in a "A Study of History" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" but more looking into genetic drivers. There a decent logical conclusions with some genetic and historical data. One thing I hope to see is in the future is analysis of epigenetics in changing the populations over time because this may even more impact on population divergence.
The theory implies natural eugenics in populations driven by significant pressures (environmental, biological, societal). You WANT the porridge to be too hot or too cold. Given the improvement in standard of living for all people including lower IQ's, then we may be facing dysgenics now in the world. When the Holocene interglacial ends ( anytime now) we should we should see a major uptake in natural eugenics (if we survive :-))

Another great book I gave as a gift to my husband. He loved it and uses it as a reference book. Great buy.

l found it very interesting , plausible but not totally proven. lt sounds like eugenics. Some cases have little evidence.

Even if i believe in evolution, I didn't believe that it was going on day after day. This book offers a new outlook on humankind.