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Back to Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Mapping the spread of mankind Comment: We each inherit half our DNA from each parent, but not all of it is equally split: the Y chromosome always comes from the father, and the mitochondrial DNA, since it's part of the original egg cell, always comes from the mother. Thus, except for mutations, a man's Y chromosome is identical to his father's, his father's father's, and so on back into the mists of time. The same is true on the maternal line for mitochondrial DNA. This provides a great opportunity: analyzing markers on these specific chromosomes allows geneticists to trace one's ancestors back to the last common ancestor on either side, the so-called mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. More, whenever there is a mutation, it is inherited down the population line to all future generations, so as populations spread out, the lines can continue to be followed. Examining the DNA of people all around the world, particularly those belonging to indigenous populations that have been in one place for many generations (as contrasted with your typical American mixed breed), allows geneticists to trace the spread of human beings across the globe. This, in brief, is the Genographic Project, perhaps the most significant undertaking ever for an organization known for its significant undertakings, the National Geographic Society. This book tells the story of the project so far. It starts with a much more in-depth explanation of the concepts that I only describe briefly above, then goes on to relate the findings so far. Just as expected, humans originated in Africa: all the lines can be traced back there, and by far the greatest genetic diversity is to be found there. The later chapters start by describing the ancestry of specific individuals, then generalizing from there to cover the overall movements. Fifty thousand years ago one of the very first band of humans left Africa, and some of them made their way all the way down to Australia, becoming the ancestors of the aborigines. Other bands stopped in the Middle East, while still others populated eastern Asia, eventually moving, about ten or twenty thousand years ago, across a frozen Bering Strait into the Americas. The whole is much more complicated than this. In fact, there's a fifty-page appendix that described the movements of the key populations at the end. If I have a criticism of this book, it's that there is too much text and not enough diagrams. It would be nice to have a great big map, along the lines of the ones National Geographic is known for, depicting all these moves and splits, rather than having to read comparatively cumbersome words about it. /> That being said, this is a fascinating project and fascinating to read about. Customer Rating: Summary: flawed book on fascinating topic Comment: The topic is important and fascinating and Wells is the man doing much of the globe-trotting collection of DNA samples - so it is worth skimming through. He seems to be trying to write like a journalist, which is a pity since he is not a very good writer and dumbs down the material. /> I didn't appreciate the author's political correctness at all, which problably won't bother most people, as it is all non sequitors anyway. It got silly at times, like Phil the Navajo having a feeling that his ancestors came from Asia - gee, we all have that feeling, since its taught in school, isn't it? The one quite serious and surprising error is that Wells has a bad conceptual flaw, writing as if 20% of the population of Europe is descended from the first agriculturalists from the fertile crescent. The data do not actually tell us that. All we know is that 20% of the mitochondrial dna is from that line - that is, one line of uninterrupted females, reveals that part of our genetic inheritance. There could be many many more ancestors from the Middle East who had lines that included both sons and daughters, whose MtDNA therefore doesn't show up. Big difference. Customer Rating: Summary: 3.5 stars: "the ultimate family gathering" Comment: Compared to Wells' earlier "Journey of Man" and Bryan Sykes' "Seven Daughters of Eve" and "Saxons, Vikings & Celts," (all three also reviewed by me on Amazon), this is considerably briefer, compressing the genetic information of both mDNA (female-transmitted) and Y-chromosome (male markers) lineages into 250 pp. including a long appendix listing all of the major profiles. Contrasted to the colorfully organized information on the National Geographic Society's "Genographic Project" online site, these appendices largely duplicate the same material in somber typeface. But, having it in book form combined with the previous 175 pp. of text, this makes a concise primer for public and home libraries that, even in our web-dependent age (as you and I know as we read this post!), still need print backup and expansion of material that on the web, as on the NGS site, must be too diffused and remains a bit unwieldy for easy cross-referencing and browsing. The maps here tend to comment silently upon the material Wells discusses. Unfortunately, Wells more often than not fails to tie his sober, but not altogether dry, text tightly enough to the graphics. You look at the charts and can figure them out, sure, but if the author had taken greater effort in being more explicit, e.g. "see figure 6, where the so-and-so can be seen ranging across the this-and-that at such-and-such a rate," the integration of print and visuals would have enhanced the combined presentation of what can be challenging material for the layperson. Wells, identified in the author's endnote as a "child prodigy," is ideally placed to write such an introduction to our "encapsulated history," but this efficiently summarized book does feel (as another reviewer commented) as a work in progress. Part of this sensation that much more is going on beneath what can be easily paraphrased for not-specialists may be that the popularization of whats going on in labs now may lag a couple of years behind what only a few experts (Sykes, Oppenheimer, and Wells himself along with possibly Luigi Cavalli-Sforza on a very short list) have the ability to translate findings derived from massive amounts of extraordinarily complex raw material into understandable prose aimed at the general reader. Bits buried in the appendices demand whole books of their own. I look forward to future volumes about these issues....Half of Ashkenazi Jews can trace their line to four women, and three of those from one "K" group and another "N1." 10-20 people crossed the Bering Strait's landbridge to engender as "Q3" most Native Americans. Click languages may have been the earliest forms of speech. Berbers in North Africa and the Saami ("Lapps") near the Arctic Circle share roots. A non-Asian "X" haplotype is one of the five present among Native American populations; "X2" came not through Siberia but from Western Eurasia. (I wanted to know how this fit into the Kennewick Man controversy, but Wells seems to edge away from debate.) Hitting the Pamir Knot of three mountain ranges connected in Central Asia split up a formerly cohesive Eurasian clan into three main groups as they could no longer move east across that continent's Eastern France-to Korea "superhighway." Seeing that Sykes has fired off two recent books aimed at the same audience, and that Stephen Oppenheimer also of Oxford (where Sykes taught too) has "The Real Eve" and the new "Origins of the British" in the past few years, now Wells has two. They-- each author having a book around 2002-4 and a second book within the past year) overlap in data and approach, but Oppenheimer appears the most academically dry, Sykes the most eagerly imaginative, and Wells takes the middle ground. No imagined scenarios (unlike Sykes, who by the way has a competing project to gather DNA data) for our NGS leader, but Wells does try with various individuals to make his chosen representatives from today's genetic lines come alive a bit with their own encounters with the data that the NGS finds. But even this attempt at connecting the world of the test tube with that of those people we pass every day is not carried through enough. The relatively brief amount of discussion given, say, the African American "Odine" who shares Thomas Jefferson's own very rare if not unique genetic marker proves a letdown. Wells builds up the case with flair, but we fail to find enough by that chapter's end to understand exactly where the 3rd President got his genetic marker from and how its rarity in England points to a rather exotic lineage not only for Odine today but any descendant of the Jefferson clan. /> In summary, the appendices and a well-chosen short list of suggested books and websites both anthropological and genealogical make this a useful source for beginners wanting a deeper look at their deep ancestry than the NGS site can provide, but not so technical as to bewilder the reader. In passing, Wells is surprisingly reticent about recruiting for the NGS project in his text, but there is an advertisement on the book's final page with information for those who wish to contribute. The NGS by the way uses the funds raised from volunteers here towards a Genographic Legacy Fund that gathers data for free from indigenous and traditional communities, so it's a worthwhile cause. I would have liked to know more about how, if Wells studied with Luigi Cavalli-Sforza for his doctoral work at Stanford, or if Wells presumably worked alongside geneticists Oppenheimer and Sykes at Oxford, how his own project and conceptualization of how the DNA research could be used differed from his eminent mentors. (As an aside, Sykes in his recent "Saxons" book never mentions Oppenheimer who I assume is just down the hall from him at Oxford!) Cavalli-Sforza with his HGDP and Sykes with his company Oxford Ancestors appear to have slightly divergent goals from the NGS study, and I remain a bit unclear about where the three DNA-gathering enterprises cooperate or whether they are all amassing their data separately. Wells hints a bit about HGDP, but does not mention Sykes' company. I suspect that the whole scientific and enterprenuerial venture's combined story here may have to wait another half-century, when an elderly Wells (he's well under 40 now!) composes his memoirs. Customer Rating: Summary: Couch Potatoes Comment: After hearing a lecture by Spencer Wells on the Genographic Project, I obtained a test kit to have my DNA analyzed. I now know the haplogroup for my y-chromosome, E3b (M35). If you are a male, you can get both your y-chromosome (male ancestry) and your mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA (female ancestry) mapped, but for the Genographic Project you have to get a separate DNA kit for each. Females can have only their mtDNA analyzed. My earliest male ancestors appeared in the Middle East 20,000 years ago. They hung around there for 10,000 years. While others were up north chasing mammoths in the snow, my ancestors were inventing stuff to make life easier: writing, agriculture, civilization. (It will be interesting to see how that last idea works out.) At the end of the ice age, 10,000 years ago, they moved a few hundred miles north to the Mediterranean where they can still be found today. Couch potatoes compared to many other groups. Wells' book explains how the Genographic Project uses differences in genes to place people in specific genetic groups and then to map their origin and migration through history. Wells is always positive about the contributions of each group to the human family. However, he seems particularly complimentary about my slow-to-move ancestors, "Occupying a single territory required more complex social organizations, ... It spurred trade, writing, and calendars, and pioneered the rise of modern, sedentary communities and cities." This is a good book to read or use as a reference once you have had your haplogroup determined. Customer Rating: Summary: We're not so different after all... Comment: Ok, so there are still a lot of obvious differences that we use to identify individuals. Keep that in the back of your mind as you digest the idea that we're all mostly made up of the same genes and genetic heritage. How significant are those subtle and small differences? Having followed this topic/effort from the periphery it wasn't as profound as it may be for most. Even so, it still boggles the mind at how much we can learn by looking within ourselves. Tying the external sciences together with the biological and statistical sciences of genographic project results in an interesting read. About a third of the book is left to appendices, etc so it left a little to be desired when I got 3/4's of the way through only to discover that I was finished. Thumbing through the appendices was interesting, but I'd rather have had all those pages applied to more analysis or commentary and give me a web page link to go look up the appendices. />The book doesn't expand much on the idea of how the genetic Adam and Eve have different ages, a brief explanation and then moving on... I also felt like the idea of the genegraphic project has made a lot of politically correct (racial?) compromises in order to get their samples. The flip side is that they did get their samples so political expediency may have been the call of the day. There is still a long, long way to go to gather enough genetic samples to fill in and bolster the genetic picture they've begun to piece together, but this book is certainly a nice primer on the concept of tracking our ancestral migrations through our genes. If I could do it over again, then I'd buy this book again. Back to Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project Showing page 4 of 5 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

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