The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey

A very nice book if one is interested in understanding how DNA analysis is being used to trace human migration and from where it started. This whole subject is about tracing back whatever factual information can be used to reconstruct our traceable origins.

It is a hard read in certain areas especially if you are mostly illiterate about DNA and its link with genealogy.

This was a major letdown. While one might be somewhat entertained by it, you won't come away from it with any understanding of anything. The writing is vague and the scientific methods are hardly mentioned. I suppose the author or his editors were afraid of scaring people. Here's the entire description of restriction enzymes: "...biochemical techniques can generate DNA fragments of a particular length based on their sequence." That's it. He manages to take a few sentences to vaguely describe gel electrophoresis, but of course never bothers to use the term "gel electrophoresis." Don't bother with this one.

I came to know about Dr Wells' work through the PBS documentary and I made sure that I got it on video so that I could slowly digest the information in it. I was amazed at the findings that we all have a common ancestor from Africa and as recently as only 60 thousand years ago! As the documentary stated at the end, any notions of racism and bigotry based on race after this discovery is just plain wrong and parochial and the implications is that we have no excuse to try and segregate but instead it makes more sense to integrate and work to a common cause: the betterment of the human race.

Still, as any movie is constrained by time, I was sure that there must have been more to this than was presented and so I decided to get the book as well. I wasn't disappointed; there are loads more information here that added to my understanding from what I learned from the video. Although it is around 200 pages long, I found it to be an easy read for the layman like myself with little technical jargon used that is not fully explained.

Wells has got a talent for simplifying complex ideas for lay understanding. If you liked the PBS documentary and want to understand further then this book is the one to get.

Highly recommended.

I really got a lot out of this book--it's a bit of a dry read at times, and some of the genetic science gets a little bit heavy (particularly in the beginning), but I learned a lot from reading. A lot of quotable new ideas in here that I wanted to talk about with friends immediately--the extinction of Neanderthals, the early advent of modern humans in Australia, the difference between human and animal as appreciated by a simple grammatical structure, and the ability to track lineage from placental and Y chromosom DNA being some things that spring immediately to mind. Worth dipping into.

I absolutely loved this book! I think the Genographic Project is amazing. Sadly I wish more people could accept Evolution. It's just hard for some to break away from indoctrination.