Mapping Human History: Discovering Our Past Through Our Genes - Hardcover

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.

Steve Olson, a science major who studied writing with John Hersey and Alice Walker, graduated from Yale University in 1978. He has written extensively on biological sciences, often working at the National Academy of the Sciences and the Institute of Genomic Research in Washington D.C. He has written for Atlantic, Science and many other magazines, and his books include Biotechnology: An Industry Comes of Age and Shaping the Future: Biological Research and Human Values.