The Journey of Man
SITARAM
http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?forum=philosophy&show=0&cid=70487
Sitaram writes:
It is funny how some trivial incident or remark from our childhood will stick
in our minds, follow us through life, and assume some important significance in
our thinking.
When I was a child, living on a dairy farm, I heard a farmer tell the following
joke:
A wealthy man was taking a walk through the forest, and he came upon three
homeless men sleeping under a tree. (Years ago, such a person was called
"Hobo.") He said to them: "I will give the LAZIEST MAN here a dollar! Which of
you is the laziest?" Immediately, two of the men jumped up and began in an
excited and animated fashion to describe and praise their laziness, vying in
competition for the dollar prize. The third man didn't move an inch, but
continued to lie in the same position, with his eyes half open. The rich man
kicked him gently and said, "Wake up! What's the matter with you, don't you
want a chance to win the dollar?"
The third man opened his eyes slightly and mumbled "Put it in my pocket."
I don't know why that old joke came to my mind just now, as I write about this
documentary, "The Journey of Man."
Perhaps, intellectually, we are all a bit like that third lazy fellow. "Put it
in my pocket." We don't want to slave and labor for our knowledge and
insights. We want someone to "put it in our pocket," or put it in our mind. We
look to angels and prophets and avatars to reveal to us the greatest secrets of
the origin and destiny of the universe and the meaning and purpose of our
existence.
I am no better than that third lazy man, always looking to PBS television and
Internet search engines to "put it in my pocket."
I have been a vegetarian for many years now because of religious convictions.
Watching this documentary made me realize that 50,000 years ago, our ancestors
were totally dependent on hunting and killing and eating meat. Even the
Chukchi reindeer herders of today are totally dependent on their herds for food
(meat) and clothing (skins). It is their reindeer who have the ability to
rummage under the snow and ice and eat the lichen plants (the only source of
vegetable sustenance) which are hidden there. Even the poor Chukchi are like
our third lazy man, unable to dig for lichens themselves or digest them, but
saying to their captive herd of reindeer, "Put it in my pocket."
I am also struck by the realization that it was the CLEVERNESS of those ancient
hunters, who first learned to TRACK animals by examining hoofprints and
droppings, which was possibly the first sign of intellectual awakening in man
(and not something like the invention of the wheel). Also, it was the hunting
and carnivorous diet which prompted the vast migration of early man, a
migration which encircled the globe, from west to east, from Africa, through
India to Australia, and through China, across the Bearing Straits, into the
Americas, down to the tip of Peru.
My father, who dislikes religions in general and vegetarianism in particular,
once scolded me for my eating habits, pointing out that a vegetarian could not
have survived during World War II, since the diet was mostly meat, and the
activities were strenuous.
Such "meat" is "food for thought" regarding vegetarianism. But then, Aquinas
in his Summa Theologica, said "I give you weak milk rather than strong meat."
Mark Twain said "censorship is forbidding a man to eat steak because a baby
could not chew it."
..........................................
It was awsome to watch this documentary on the work of Dr. Spencer Wells. If
his theory is true (and I see no reason why it should not be true), then that
tells us something very revealing about "revealed" religions, with their
accounts of Adam and Eve and the origin of Man.
There is ALSO a female source of genetic markers, passed unchanged from
generation to generation, in the form of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are
organelles within each cell which perform a process called "the Krebs cycle",
burning sugar and creating energy. Apparently the mitochondria of the newborn
child comes from the mother's and not from the process of fertilization which
blends some of the father's genes with the mother's genes. "The Seven
Daughrters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes documents the results of a study of
mitochondrial DNA.
It is the Y chomosome of males which is passed to their offspring unchanged,
making the study of male genetic codes the key to unravelling the mystery of
mankind's origins.
I had always been aware of some tribe in Africa called "bushmen", who speak in
a language of alien "clicks". Apparently, they their Y-chromosomes indicate
that they are the oldest surviving tribe in the world, related to that one
individual some 50,000 years ago (2000 generations ago), who is the ancestor of
all people living in the world today. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some
of the oldest genetic markers in the world.
At the end of this documentary, Dr. Wells comments that THIS period in history
may be the LAST window of opportunity to do such a study, while there still
exist isolated undisturbed tribes such as the Bushmen, Chukchi reindeer herders
and Kyrgyz nomads and Australian aborigines. In another 100 years, such tribes
and primitive ways of life may disappear, and intermarriage may obscure the
tell-tale genetic markers of future generations.
=================
http://www.pbs.org/previews/2002fall/joum.html
"Forget everything you know about family and everything you think you know
about race. Incredible new genetic evidence, based on thousands of blood
samples taken across the world over the past year, shows that all humans alive
today are descended from a single man who lived in Africa some 60,000 years
ago. Each and every person on this planet is part of a connected family of
man."
"Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code,
Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of
population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole
of humanity. The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells
tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam and Eve, but that
Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been
used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing
racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups, and that
the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the
world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not
our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be
accounted for by just ten individuals."
Dr. Spencer Wells, a 33-year-old geneticist, closed the door on his laboratory
and embarked on the biggest adventure of his life. His mission: to retrace the
most extraordinary journey of all time, a journey that involves every man,
woman and child alive today.
Join Wells in JOURNEY OF MAN as he travels to every continent on earth, endures
every terrain, from the deserts of Namibia to the frozen extremes of the
Russian Arctic, and meets the key human groups that hold the genetic history of
mankind in their blood — including the African Bushmen, Australian
Aborigines, Native Americans, Chukchi reindeer herders and Kyrgyz nomads. The
two-hour program first aired on PBS Tuesday, January 21, 2003.
This is a true story. Once upon a time the human family numbered only a few and
inhabited one continent, Africa. Then, forced by drought and famine, this small
group left their homeland and embarked on the most hazardous journey of all
time. They didn't stop until they had reached the very ends of the earth. We
are all their children.
Wells has been part of a worldwide team of scientists deciphering these details
for the past 15 years. How? The team has been reading clues left behind by
these ancient travellers, in the blood of everyone alive today. Humans carry
tiny changes in their DNA sequence — passed on by their ancestors, from
grandparents to ancestral grandparents of 2,000 generations. They are all
present in the genes of the humans of today and will be passed on to the
children of tomorrow. Wells tracks these DNA changes — the map of human
history. Now at last the greatest history story ever is ready to be told for
the first time.
http://www.bevsbest.com/Authors-Books/Spencer-Wells/The-Journey-Of-Man-by-
Spencer-Wells.htm
Around 60,000 years ago, a man--identical to us in all important
respects--lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How
did this real-life Adam wind up father of us all?
What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And
why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so
many sizes, shapes, and races?
Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code,
Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of
population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole
of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they
fought, loved, and influenced.
Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing
information. Wells tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam
and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years.
We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity
from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain
ranges split population groups, and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have
some of the oldest genetic markers in the world.
We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our
ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be
accounted for by just ten individuals.
It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early
humankind--as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that
is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries,
questions now more compelling than ever.
Spencer Wells traces human evolution back to our very first ancestor in The
Journey of Man. Along the way, he sums up the explosive effect of new
techniques in genetics on the field of evolutionary biology and all available
evidence from the fossil record.
Wells's seemingly sexist title is purposeful: he argues that the Y chromosome
gives us a unique opportunity to follow our migratory heritage back to a sort
of Adam, just as earlier work in mitochondrial DNA allowed the identification
of Eve, mother of all Homo sapiens.
While his descriptions of the advances made by such luminary scientists as
Richard Lewontin and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza can be dry, Wells comes through
with sparkling metaphors when it counts, as when he compares genetic drift to a
bouillabaisse recipe handed down through a village's generations.
Though finding our primal male is an exciting prospect, the real revolution
Wells describes is racial. Or rather, nonracial, as he reiterates the
scientific truth that our notions of what makes us different from each other
are purely cultural, not based in biology.
The case for an "out of Africa" scenario of human migration is solid in this
book, though Wells makes it clear when he is hypothesizing anything
controversial. Readers interested in a fairly technical, but not overwhelming,
summary of the remarkable conclusions of 21st-century human evolutionary
biology will find The Journey of Man a perfect primer. --Therese Littleton
From the Inside Flap
"Written with much verve, easy to read, and up-to-date on many important
developments." (Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Stanford University, author of The
History and Geography of Human Genes and Genes, Peoples, and Languages.)
"Spencer Wells, whose genetic work has contributed to our understanding of
human prehistory, has provided the lay reader with an account of the spread and
mixing of the human species from its origin in Africa that is both
scientifically accurate and accessible to the nonscientist.
In achieving that accessibility, he has not made the common error of confusing
simple explanations with simplistic ones. Most important, Wells has the
intellectual integrity, all too rare in popularizations of science, to
distinguish what is really known from what is only speculation." (Richard
Lewontin, Harvard University, author of It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of
the Human Genome and Other Illusions.)
http://enotalone.com/books/ASIN/069111532X.html
This book will blow you away. In clear, easy-to-follow language, with helpful
analogies, Wells describes a scientific and geographical journey wherein, by
means of DNA analysis, he and his fellow scientists tracked the contemporary
"Y" chromosome from two common ancestors in Africa to the DNA of every living
human being. Unbelievably, there really was one "Adam" and one "Eve" --
although they lived more than 100,000 years apart -- whose descendants left
Africa about 40,000 years ago and, over 2000 subsequent generations, were the
origin of us all. The understanding that we are all related -- cousins many
thousands of times removed, if you will -- may not have any immediate effect on
politics and social relations, but it does put our human conflicts into a
different context, as well as blast away most genetically-based theories of
race. Although cultures may differ in many respects, and human beings may
subscribe to different value and belief systems, we really are, genetically,
one human family. I read this book cover-to-cover in one day, and found it
fascinating, astonishing and inspiring. Kudos to Wells and his crew. Also,
those of you who have kids who may be too young to follow the science in this
book should try the video.
I read "The Journey of Man" by Spencer Wells because I saw his documentary on
PBS a few weeks earlier. I immediately followed up by reading "The Seven
Daughrters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes (2001) because the web site called my
attention to it. I'm glad I read Wells first. He covers the direct-male-line of
the human race as traced by the Y-chromosome, constructing a family tree of the
whole world outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Sykes makes more sense with Wells's
study in mind because he traces only a European family tree based on
mytochondrial DNA, which shows the direct-female-line of descent. He devotes
only a brief chapter at the end to fill out the family tree of the rest of the
human race, including sub-Saharan Africa. It's clear from a page in Sykes's
book that there has been some animosity between the two schools of thought (the
authors have opposite links to Luca Cavalli-Sforza). Yet it's easy to fit
Sykes's argument into Wells's thinking if you read Wells first; the opposite
works less well. The two books are complementary; one does not refute the
other. Both authors agree that more genetic sampling is needed to complete the
picture; the work has just begun.