Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

Nicholas Wade, Professor of Visual Psychology Nicholas Wade

Penguin, 2006 - Human evolution - 312 pages

In just the last few years an explosion of discoveries - driven by information from the human genome - has empowered researchers to address many long-standing questions about the deep human past. Nicholas Wade has drawn on the new findings to present the first portrait of a special and hitherto mysterious group of human ancestors - the ancestral human population that lived in Africa 50,000 years ago and from whom everyone in the world today is descended. The human line evolved slowly from African apes until, quite recently in the timescale of human history, it acquired a novel faculty, the gift of language. With this transformation, humans became more innovative and their societies more cohesive. People were at last able to burst out of the African homeland where the stronger Neanderthals had long confined them, and then to inhabit the rest of the world.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - JBGUSA - LibraryThing

Absolutely fascinating book about the dawn of man. The book traces the travels of the human race after groups of them left the great rift Valley of Africa.

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - LisCarey - LibraryThing

Nicholas Wade discusses how the growing science of genetics expands and deepens our understanding of human evolution, our relationship to our closest relatives, and how we became the species we are ...

Contents

• GENETICS GENESIS: 1
• FIRST WORDS: 35
• EDEN: 51
• EXODUS: 74
• STASIS: 100
• SETTLEMENT: 123
• SOCIALITY: 139
• RACE: 181
• LANGUAGE: 202
• HISTORY: 233
• EVOLUTION: 264
• Notes: 281
• Acknowledgments: 297

About the author

Nicholas Wade received a BA in natural sciences from King's College, Cambridge. He was the deputy editor of "Nature" magazine in London and then became that journal's Washington correspondent. He joined "Science" magazine in Washington as a reporter and later moved to "The New York Times," where he has been an editorial writer, concentrating on issues of defense, space, science, medicine, technology, genetics, molecular biology, the environment, and public policy, a science reporter, and a science editor.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
• Authors: Nicholas Wade, Professor of Visual Psychology Nicholas Wade
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Penguin, 2006
• ISBN: 1594200793, 9781594200793
• Length: 312 pages