James ShreeveReseñas

This is three interwoven stories.

The first is the story of the Neandertals: who they were, what they did, where they came from and where they went, who were their predecessors, successors and neighbors, and what kind of world they inhabited. The field is continually refreshed by new archaelogical and genetic studies. The author, not a scientist but a writer, amasses and organizes the facts in an interesting and skillful way and writes rather well about the science. The approach is largely chronological, tracking the history of archaeological discoveries in the field. There is a very occasional clumsiness or loose end, but this story fascinated me, and I recommend it to anyone with a healthy curiosity about our humanness. These Neandertals, our cousins, survived and reproduced continually for a quarter million years through ice ages and other catastrophies until somehow disappearing about 35,000 years ago, after the appearance of fully moderm humans in Europe. We have yet a very long way to go to match that record of success.

The second story tells how the archaeological evidence was discovered and about scientists who collected and evaluate it. To anyone not familiar with the usual professional squabbles in any field or with the dialectic that characterizes good science, this second story should be instructive, even if the personalities don't always spring to life.

The third story tells of the author's experiences in meeting and interviewing the scientists. The writing here is unfortunate (in a published book) and seems different in character from the rest, as though the author had farmed out this descriptive task to a middling high schooler. No adjective, comma or figure of speech is safe. Editors may have failed the author in this regard. While you can scan some of it, your eye will catch an important word, and then you must go back and read again. This wears heavily on the patience. As the book proceeds, there is ever less of this writing. Anyway it takes up only the smaller part of the book.

Reduced to schillings and pence, how does it add up? Five stars for Story 1, three stars for Story 2, and one star for Story 3. So three stars. But forewarned is forearmed: if you are reading this, then two stars more, one more for the book and one for you. I could do with one, also, I'm sure.

I am glad I read the book. There is some new science since the book was published, but you can catch up on that: check Wikipedia for "Denisova hominin". The new evidence suggests, among other things, that Neandertals did mate with modern humans, contributing about 4% of their DNA to the modern but non-African human genome and further suggests that adaptive selective pressures may account for its retention.

Companion to the PBS television series.

This book is a sequel to the famous Lucy which described finding an early hominid that challenged the then orthodoxy about human origins. In this book Johanson goes back to Olduvai Gorge and finds another specimen (less sensational), and takes the opportunity to review changes in the thinking in the field of human origins since his first book.

The journalist surveys the existing literature and experts on what we know about Neandertal man and what happened to this species. It was fascinating that this species came to a dead end 30,000 years ago.

This is about anthropology, first man, and human ancestors. It also discusses the battles between famous paleoanthropologists such as Tim White, the Leakeys, Donald Johanson, Desmond Clark, Raymond Dart, etc.

The discovery in this book is not in the same league as the original, but it's still a well told story, and a good explanation of the growing interdisciplinary nature of the study of human origins.½

Although necessarily out of date, this book provides a good introduction to what was known about Neandertals at the time; the history is detailed, including details of the many controversies surrounding Neandertal society and human evolution. One thing that stands out loud and clear through the pages of this book is the problem that occurs in science when political correctness, whether the kind that assumes western Europeans must be superior or the kind that assumes all are inherently equal, becomes a guiding factor. The inability to envision a possible hypothesis because it offends your sensitivities is a weakness few scientists can afford, and some of the nonsensical twists and turns that try to fit inconvenient facts into your preferred theory are described in gory detail in this book. The author treats his subject, and the scientists, with affection and respect, and that helps him say the things he needs to say. In addition, he adopts an almost poetic prose in many places which serves his subject well.½

The BEST book about the Humane Genome Project and Celera (and I have read them all...).

Craig Venter instigated one of the biggest scientific races in modern times by challenging the government funded Human Genome Project to arrive at a privately funded sequencing of the human genome using an untested technique. Shreeve does an excellent job capturing the intensity and excitement of the scientific, academic, business and intellectual property complexity of the human genome. Venter gave Shreeve almost unlimited access to the activities of his company, Celera, during the historic achievement.

Recently, a graduate student at the University of Oregon shared his excitement in unlocking the secrets of the cellular processes involved in the differentiation of a fruit fly stem cell into its retinal cell. I had no idea how far genomic science had come and how interesting the interaction of the “wet benchâ€? research is when combined with the power of bioinformatics of the “dry benchâ€? (computer simulation) to find sequences of cellular processes. The wet bench is used to explore the interactions of single genes and their effects on proteins and a single cellular process. As more is learned, it is put into the computer to understand the complex interaction of multiple genes, multiple proteins and thousands of cellular processes. Most of this new found capability arose out of the human genome project race.

At the heart of the book, the author captures the tension between business research, academic research, intellectual property rights, and the freedom to share scientific information. Shreeve personalizes this tension through the battles between Venter and Francis Collins of the NIH for the academic glory and the battles of Venter and his boss Tony White of Perkin Elmer. These same issues are fought daily not just in biology but also in areas like the Open Source Software Movement and the patenting of software.

This book is a great read capturing an important piece of scientific history and a great lay person’s introduction to the many aspects of genomic sciences. Since the book was published, Venter has turned his sites on another impossible problem – helping the world use less energy. His latest company, Synthetic Genomics, is heeding the call of Tom Friedman to find ways to make the US more energy efficient. Venter is working on creating new organisms which will “eatâ€? pollutants and produce energy products like ethanol and hydrogen.

tries to portray it as fast paced and exciting. biology unfortunately is not. very good with the analogies, although light on the technical information.

Thinking of becoming an anthropologist? Read something anthropological first...then pick anything else.

Solving the mystery of modern human origins

Archeology