As
a long time reader of science books I was immediately attracted to this book
due to its great title – titles are important, take note publishers. The last
science book I read was the great The Fifth Miracle by Paul Davies, which
was an examination of how life evolved. Cochran and Harpending’s book promised
an argument against the long held theory that humans stopped evolving fifty
thousand years ago, just after emerging out of Africa. The book describes
itself as the “…the latest edition to the fast emerging discipline of
biohistory.” There’s been quite a
bit of news
related to this area lately, so I thought that it was time to give it a read.
The
book opens with a refutation of “conventional wisdom”, with the authors
claiming that human evolution has accelerated in the last ten thousand years due
to various selection pressures, such as agriculture, geographic expansion and
climate change. They go on to examine the period that started fifty to forty
thousand years ago when modern humans moved into the European territories of
the Neanderthal. Ten thousand years later the Neanderthal were extinct and
humans were flourishing. No one knows for sure but it seems that humans
displayed better adaptations such as advanced language, tools and hunting
techniques. There is convincing genetic evidence that we interbreed with
Neanderthals and picked up and kept various advantageous genes – just ask Ozzy
Osbourne.
The
ensuing four chapters examine the impact of the advent of agriculture some ten
thousand years ago and how the changes to what we ate affected our genetic
makeup; the genetic flow of humanity as expressed by selective sweeps of
particular genes and also the impact of expansion on humans throughout the
globe. A succinct summary - but if you want to know the facts then read the
book! But is it worth reading?
The
ideas presented in The 10,000 Year Explosion are certainly well argued. The
authors blend history, archaeology, paleontology and biology to weave their arguments
convincingly. They refer to their work as “genetic history” – a “new kind of
history.” This is all very well but unfortunately the flaw of this book is that
the writing style is relatively bland. There is an effort to engage and give
the facts some personality, but as interested as I was in the arguments
presented I often found myself bored. I believe that writing popular science is
a tricky thing, because, after all, you don’t want to dumb it down; but also
you don’t want to put the average reader off either. After reading this book I
appreciate science writers such as Paul Davies
and Marcus Chown for their efforts to
both explain and engage.
The
10,000 Year Explosion ends with a case study of the Ashkenazi Jews – Jews that
were confined to Europe from medieval times and that were restricted to money
lending and clerical professions; the kind of jobs that required a certain
level of intelligence. The combination of the demands of their profession and
their tendency to marry within their faith meant that the European Jews were
selected for a higher intelligence than Jews in the Middle East. Five hundred
or so years later descendants of this group were making the major scientific
breakthroughs throughout many disciplines and they also displayed higher IQs
than other groups. A fascinating case study, but once again the bland writing
created a nagging sense of boredom.
The
story of human evolution is an amazing tale to behold - one that’s obsessed me
on and off for years. It’s compelling, fascinating and most of all it’s our
story. Unfortunately this book does not really capture the sense of wonder that
our story can engender, which is a shame. Read this book if you want the facts,
but perhaps look elsewhere if you want to feel that elusive sense of wonder.
Although I was slightly disappointed overall, the one interesting thing this
book did do for me was to make me ponder just how our present point in human
evolutionary history will be viewed in five hundred years; and that’s not such
a bad thing.
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