Product Description

Until just a few years ago, we knew surprisingly little about the 150,000 or so years of human existence before the advent of writing. Some of the most momentous events in our past - including our origins, our migrations across the globe, and our acquisition of language - were veiled in the uncertainty of 'prehistory'. That veil is being lifted at last by geneticists and other scientists. "Mapping Human History" is nothing less than an astonishing 'history of prehistory'. Steve Olson travelled through four continents to gather insights into the development of humans and our expansion throughout the world. He describes, for example, new thinking about how centres of agriculture sprang up among disparate foraging societies at roughly the same time. He tells why most of us can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius among our forebears. He pinpoints why the ways in which the story of the Jewish people jibes with, and diverges from, biblical accounts. And using very recent genetic findings, he explodes the myth that human races are a biological reality.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1076448 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
As the subtitle of Mapping Human History tells us, Steve Olson's fascinating new book is about Discovering the Past through our Genes. One of the few things to separate us humans from the chimps is our curiosity about ourselves and our history. Until very recently we have been frustrated by our own prehistoric ancestors’ failure to record where exactly they came from or where they were going to. The archaeological record only provides the bare bones and stones of the story. Thanks, however, to the modern scientific miracle of biomolecular gene mapping, we can now track the movements of our ancestors and relatives in surprising detail. Just as forensic science can catch out an American president's peccadillo with an intern, so can we catch out our predecessors who left genetic evidence of the seed they scattered as they migrated around the Earth. We all carry our family history with us in almost every cell of our bodies.

As a professional science journalist who has worked for the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Genomic Research in Washington DC, Olson is very well placed to communicate the scientific details of this emerging story in an eminently readable form for the general reader. Mapping Human History is a well-researched exploration (with full notes of sources and index) of our current understanding of the diaspora of modern humans out of Africa, a mere 100,000 or so years ago. As he is at pains to point out, every single one of the six billion people on the planet today is descended from the small group of anatomically modern humans who once lived in eastern Africa--we are all Africans despite the superficial differences which racists try to make a meal of. While telling the remarkable stories of the travels of different populations around the world, which have resulted in the huge range of cultural differences, Olson constantly reminds us of our biological connectedness one with another.--Douglas Palmer

Sunday Telegraph, 14th July 2002
‘Olson's is a steady hand to help guide us through these treacherous waters.’

Guardian
"'Mapping Human History' has an important and engrossing tale to tell and olsen tells it well"

Customer Reviews

Very few maps!
I think the title is a little misleading. I found the book to be more concerned with arguments against racism than how and when human beings populated the world. If the latter is your interest then Cavalli-Sforza might be a better choice.

wonderful book!
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.

A recipe for race?
Although many words have been written attempting to show the unity of the human species, Steve Olson makes yet another attempt. He feels the need is there to be met. Instead of basing his effort on philosophical or moral grounds, he turns to our genetic record to make his point. It's a valid quest using unimpeachable methods and Olson presents it well. Some of the material, such as Wilson and Cann's "mitochondrial Eve" may be a bit shopworn, but it's an essential element of Olson's scenario. He builds his structure carefully and solidly, so a bit of used material isn't out of place. After all, he's not attempting any new, revolutionary concept in this book. He merely wishes to displace old, traditional ideas with a new reality.

Given the entrenched thinking about "race" in human cultures, calling Olson's task daunting is grievous understatement. The human diaspora from Africa he traces reaches across 150 millennia. Unlike most other species, humanity developed at an astonishing rate. Tracing genetic changes with humans migrating across the planet, not always in one direction is staggeringly difficult. Olson struggles, usually successfully, to reconcile the paleoanthropological finds with genetics research. He demonstrates the likely origins of the Chinese, Europeans, Australian and Western Hemispheric Aborigines. One subset of our species, the Jews, receives some special attention.

Olson recognises that much of the information he addresses is "highly contentious", but he bravely sets out to reconcile the views of many researchers. He examines in some detail, for example, hotly disputed notions about linguistic evolution. Given that the human population at the beginnings of language was already "on the road", his own description of language origins seems a bit thin. It would be unfair to fault him for this section, however, particularly since his aim isn't to prove or disprove any of the theories, but to use linguistic evolution as a metaphor. A full analysis of the topics in historical linguistics would double the size of the book. Readers interested in the topic should start with Olson's bibliography and keep reading.

Does Olson succeed in his quest? With the advances made in genetic analysis over the past generation, the origin of our species in Africa is now beyond dispute. Whether there's been enough time for local populations to form genetically distinct sub-species of Homo sapiens, Olson deftly refutes. There's been far too much intermingling and interbreeding to establish the kinds of races birds have done. That cultural ties keep groups with some identifiable physical traits such as the epicanthic folds of some Asian peoples doesn't justify labelling them with racial identities. A broadening of marriage traditions would quickly blend out the trait, as it already has in some areas.

Olson has performed a monumental task in defining our species. He covers the globe over an immense time span. He traces, as best he can with current evidence, the various tracks our ancestors took in occupying the planet. There's little doubt he's built a solid case for our identity as a single, if widespread, species. He helps his theme with some useful maps and other diagrams. Clearly our common ancestor denies the notion of "separate races".

On the other hand, why did he feel the need to make this effort. Clearly, "race", whether or not biologically valid, is a strong element in human thinking. Why this should be doesn't appear to be something we can identify through genetic analysis. The cause is ultimately, as Olson tentatively concedes, cultural. Bring up your children to hate someone identifiable, and they likely will do so. In Hawaii, likely the planet's most ethnically blended society, intermarriage, mixed schools and churches and full job opportunity, still has not shed divisions among its people. Olson would like his book to help overcome those divisions. It isn't likely to happen unless every human alive reads this book. And accepts his conclusions. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]