Synopses & Reviews
In this sweeping narrative of the past 150,000 years of human history, Steve Olson draws on new understandings in genetics to reveal how the people of the world came to be.
Traveling across four continents, Olson describes the African origins of modern humans and the migration of our ancestors throughout the world. He offers a genealogy of all of humanity, explaining, for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius as their forebears and how the history of the Jewish people jibes with, and diverges from, biblical accounts. He shows how groups of people differ and yet are the same, exploding the myth that human races are a biological reality while demonstrating how the accidents of history have resulted in the rich diversity of people today.
Celebrating both our commonality and our variety, MAPPING HUMAN HISTORY is a masterful synthesis of the human past and present that will forever change how we think about ourselves and our relations with others.
Review
'\"Olson raises the level of discourse to a new high, assembling powerful evidence to support the no-races hypothesis.\"'
Review
'\"An instructive overview of human history.\"'
Review
"Olson raises the level of discourse to a new high, assembling powerful evidence to support the no-races hypothesis." Kirkus Reviews
"An engaging and fast-paced look at a subject that has profound implications for our everyday lives." Publishers Weekly
"An instructive overview of human history." Boston Herald
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
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.
Table of Contents
Contents Introduction: The Human Pageant 1
I. Africa
1. The End of Evolution: The African Origins of Modern Humans 11 2. Individuals and Groups: The Divergence of Modern Humans 32 3. The African Diaspora and the Genetic Unity of Modern Humans 54
II. The Middle East
4. Encounters with the Other: Modern Humans and Neandertals In the Middle East 73 5. Agriculture, Civilization, and the Emergence of Ethnicity 90 6. Godand#8217;s People: A Genetic History of the Jews 106
III. Asia and Australia
7. The Great Migration: To Asia and Beyond 123 8. Sprung from a Common Source: Genes and Languages 137
IV. Europe
9. Who Are the Europeans? 157 10. Immigration and the Future of Europe 175
V. The Americas
11. The Settlement of the Americas 193 12. The Burden of Knowledge: Native Americans and the Human Genome Diversity Project 208
VI. The World
13. The End of Race: Hawaii and the Mixing of Peoples 223
Notes 241 Acknowledgments 276 Index 279