A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, by Adam Rutherford
Curious about your ear wax? Unsure why you are lactose intolerant.. or because your hair is brown, but your brothers is blonde?
This is a story about you.. simplified by Adam Rutherford; dumified by me.
Some 100,000 years ago, a crew of Homo Sapiens got on the move from Africa and headed north towards the European continent.
Fast forward a few decades (or hundreds of years), they stumble upon a group of archaic humans what they call Neanderthals, somewhere around North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
Cross paths with human evolution researchers of the Neanderthals and the Human Genome Project and you find that Rutherford - who of which has an impressive back catalogue of historic accolades, found their work graceful and stylish, yet slightly inaccurate on proceedings of genetic results.
He “briefly” swifts us through the complexity of our modern day relationship with the long extinct Neanderthals, much thanks to our ancestors for, well, having sex to be truthful, for thousands and thousands of years on end - where it is explained how difficult it can be to be precise on our lineage, with more and more studies being released every day.
We are sort of driven through the looks of the genes vs environment, farming vs hunter gatherings, modifications of blue eyes, blonde hair.. through to the divides of regional United Kingdom.
Throw a bit of deep diving of our DNA - if you go back further enough, one can find a common ancestor of everyone on earth in the space of around 3500 years.
Pretty fascinating if you ask me.
You my friend, could very well be my cousin.. how weird eh?!
The second half of the book covers a bit of who we are now, the genetics of race, a touch of our fate and a short (15 odd page) introduction to the future of where we are headed.
In a, I quote “brief” manner, these 379 pages take you on a journey, to end up questioning why are some hairs on my head now grey, and many more offers of the imagination.
If you dive in.. let me know what you think.
