Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins

I went to google.com and searched my name...Jarred Stephen Olson. Then I clicked the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button and it came to this book. The funny thing is, my dads name is Steve Olson, and look who the author is :p

This skillfully written book by a scientist/journalist reports on his groundbreaking research into the origins of the "anatomically modern human," which he tracks across 100,000 years of history to a small group who once lived in eastern Africa. Although it still remains a mystery as to how this one group survived when other less modern humans did not, the archaeological evidence does not show that conflict was the cause.

The DNA research which forms the basis of this book, dispels once and for all the whole fabric of the myth of race. Revealing that the inconsequential biological differences that have been so enlarged to provide social rationalization and justifications for discrimination, genocide and war, throughout the world for most of man's history, could not account for the drastic cultural differences between groups.

In looking at DNA histories of five broad regional groups, the only conclusion that a thoughtful reader can derive from this research is that evolving biological differences seem almost assuredly to have been driven by cultural differences rather than the other way around.

Five Stars

As mentioned in previous reviews, this is a politically correct journalist tackling human genetic diversity. At a minimum I anticipated a scientific review of the latest research in the field, a survey of recent findings. Instead I was subjected to an endless barrage of Mr. Olson's opinions, and I do emphasize the word opinions, on the genetics of race. I would expect an experienced science writer to at least make an attempt to separate his opinions from scientific fact...no such luck here. Save your money and purchase a book written by a "real scientist."

I purchased this book when I saw someone else reading it and was intrigued by the title. I wasn't disappointed.

Olson's book is interesting and very informative. Certainly if anyone is inclined to believe, as some still persist in doing, that the various races and ethnic groups are genetically predestined to be "very" anything more one than the other, there is ample evidence in this book that this is just not so. More and more, as Steve Olson points out, all humans groups are known to display attributes of all types along a continuum. Most especially, and usually contentiously, every group has both the very brainy and the very stupid. Individuals may be smarter than one another, but groups and people in general display the trait along a standard distribution curve.

Probably the only book that demonstrates the whys of this better is Jarrod Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In that book the author is able to actually point out the environmental causes of cultural differences between groups that appear "advanced" as opposed to those that seem "primitive." As others have noted, no culture is "simple." Most of us would not be able to survive if dropped in the middle of the arctic and even fewer of us would survive being dropped off in the middle of the Saudi desert. It takes knowledge, skills and abilities that most of us don't possess, in short, technology and data bases with which we are unfamiliar. Nor does the author pull any punches in his later book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed when he points out that a "successful" culture in one location need not be successful in another, especially if the environment is not the same, the failure of the Vikings in Greenland being a classic case in point.

I have read other books on the genetic history of the human being and was intrigued by the vastly increased knowledge that has accrued since I first read, as many of us did, about Mitochondrial Eve. The new information on the North American aboriginal population was especially interesting. If nothing else, the claim that all prehistoric remains on the continent are, ipso facto, of their ancestors is something that can hardly be refuted, especially with the author's description of the likely early peopling of the continent. The case of the relatedness of the Cohans was something I had already read in a science journal, but it was still very intriguing.

I have often myself thought that I was probably related to the same individuals, for instance some 300 years ago, by several avenues of decent. In short, I'm related to them more than one time. The author confirmed my suspicions, using the same means of coming to that conclusion as I did.

Probably the most important part of the book is the last few chapters. These discuss the issues that arise when groups move into an area and the local population feels "invaded." Population movements have been occurring for centuries with more or less resistance and violence. That it is still happening and that local groups still have occasion to resent it suggests that friction is an unfortunate fact of life. It would appear that no matter how genetically related we are, our cultural attributes still dictate how we feel about one another.

Fun and informative.

Mapping Human History by Steve Olson is very informative, written very well, Easy to absorbe his information. He uses a lot of references which enables further study.