The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey (31 page)

The best English translation of Herodotus’
History
I have found is that by David Grene (University of Chicago Press, 1987). It is written in a vernacular style that manages to communicate the excitement of the Greek historian’s world in a fresh way – nearly 2,500 years after it was written.

Darwin’s
Beagle
journal has been published and reprinted many times – the version I have used is
The Voyage of the Beagle
(Modern Library, New York, 2001), with an interesting introduction by Steve Jones. Many of the biographical details of Darwin’s life came from Janet Browne’s wonderfully readable
Charles Darwin: Voyaging
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1995) – the first in a planned two-volume definitive biography. Darwin’s
On the Origin of Species
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1964) and
The Descent of Man
(Princeton University Press, 1981) are so well known that they need no introduction.

Carelton Coon’s work was summarized in his two influential books
The Origin of Races
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1962) and
The Living Races of Man
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1965). Daniel Kevles’s excellent summary of the perversion of a naïve ideal can be found in his
In the Name of Eugenics
(Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1985), and additional material is covered in Stephen Jay Gould’s
The Mismeasure of Man
(W. W. Norton, New York, 1981) and Jonathan Marks’s
Human Biodiversity
(Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1995).

The title of this chapter – Latin for ‘out of many, one’ – is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America, found on all US coins.

The history of blood group studies and their application to human population genetics has been summarized in Arthur Mourant’s seminal book
The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups
(Blackwell, Oxford, 1954). Much of my examination of Lewontin’s work comes
from many hours spent discussing genetics and human diversity with him, but many of his ideas are explained in
The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1974) and
Human Diversity
(Scientific American Press, New York, 1982). His original paper analysing human genetic variation was published in the
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
(6: 381–98, 1972) – one of the most important twentieth-century publications in the field of human genetics.

Theodosius Dobzhansky’s
Genetics and the Origin of Species
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1982) and Motoo Kimura’s
The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution
(Cambridge University Press, 1983) are good summaries of these scientists’ contributions to population genetics.

Cavalli-Sforza’s work is summarized in
The History and Geography of Human Genes
and
Genes, Peoples and Languages
(see above). The original papers describing human population trees were published by Edwards and Cavalli-Sforza in V. E. Heywood and J. McNeill (eds.),
Phenetic and Phylogenetic Classification
(The Systematics Association, London, 1964, pp. 67–76), Cavalli-Sforza and Edwards in
Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Genetics
(2: 923–33, 1964), and Cavalli-Sforza, Barrai and Edwards in Cold
Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology
(29: 9–20, 1964). Cavalli-Sforza and Bodmer’s
The Genetics of Human Populations
(W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1971) is a classic textbook – luckily, it has recently been reprinted by Dover after being unavailable for many years.

Parsimony is discussed in much greater detail in Elliot Sober (ed.),
Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology
(MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984), and in Arnold Kluge’s contribution to T. Duncan and T. F. Stuessy (eds.),
Cladistics: Perspectives on the Reconstruction of Evolutionary History
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1984, pp. 24–38).

Zuckerkandl and Pauling’s work on the use of molecules to infer evolutionary history was published in several journal articles during the early 1960s; perhaps the best summaries are in M. Kasha and B. Pullman (eds.),
Horizons in Biochemistry
(Academic Press, New York, 1962, pp. 189–225) and
Journal of Theoretical Biology
(8: 357–66, 1965). Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allan Wilson’s work on
mitochondrial Eve was published in
Nature
(325: 31–6, 1987), and followed up by Vigilant et al. in
Science
(253: 1503–7, 1991). The analysis of complete mtDNA sequences (showing an unequivocally African origin for world mtDNA lineages) was published in
Nature
by Ingman et al. (408: 708–13, 2000).

An excellent historical summary of early palaeoanthropological work is Eric Trinkaus and Pat Shipman’s
The Neanderthals
(Vintage, New York, 1992). Additional material can be found in the books by Brian Fagan and Richard Klein cited above, as well as in
Java Man
(Little, Brown, London, 2000) by Garniss Curtis, Carl Swisher and Roger Lewin, and in Robin McKie’s
Ape Man
(BBC, London, 2000).

Other DNA studies supporting an African origin for modern humans were published by Wainscoat et al. (
Nature
319: 491–3, 1986), Tishkoff et al. (
Science
271: 1380–7, 1996) and Jin et al. (
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
96: 3796–800, 1999). There are others, analysing different regions of the genome, but all show essentially the same pattern – greater genetic diversity within Africa.

Two good technical reviews on the structure and evolution of the Y-chromosome are Jobling and Tyler-Smith’s in
Trends in Genetics
(11: 449–56, 1995) and Lahn et al.’s in
Nature Reviews Genetics
(2: 207–16, 2001). Early papers on Y-chromosome variation were those by Casanova et al. (
Science
230: 1403–6, 1985), Lucotte and Ngo (
Nucleic Acids Research
13: 82–5, 1985), Dorit et al. (
Science
268: 1183–5, 1995) and Hammer (
Science
378: 376–8, 1995). DHPLC and its application to Y-chromosome population genetics is discussed in Underhill et al. (
Genome Research
7: 996–1005, 1997). The paper by Underhill et al. dating Adam to 59,000 years ago was published in
Nature Genetics
(26: 358–61, 2000).

Bruce Chatwin’s
The Songlines
(Vintage, London, 1987) gives a general introduction to aboriginal culture. Other good sources on Australian prehistory are A. W. Reed’s
Aboriginal Myths, Legends & Fables
(Reed New Holland, Sydney, 1993), Kleinert and Neale’s
Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture
(Oxford University Press, 2000) and Tim Flannery’s
The Future Eaters
(Reed New Holland, Sydney, 1994). The archaeology and geology of Lake Mungo is described in Allan Fox’s
Mungo National Park
(Beaten Track Press, Yarralumla, 1997). The dates for the Lake Mungo human remains are currently being revised, and I benefited greatly from my discussions with archaeologist Doug Williams, Executive Officer of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, based in Buronga, New South Wales.

A good introduction to African geography and climate is Lewis and Berry’s
African Environments and Resources
(Unwin Hyman, Boston, 1988). Robert Walter and colleagues’ research on African coastal dwellers was reported in
Nature
(405: 65–9, 2000). The mtDNA evidence for a coastal exodus from Africa was published by Lluis Quintana-Murci in
Nature Genetics
(23: 437–41, 1999). The Y-chromosome data on the distribution of M130 (also known as RPS4YT) is taken from three publications: Kayser et al. (
American Journal of Human Genetics
68: 173–90, 2001), Underhill et al. (
Annals of Human Genetics
65: 43–62, 2001) and Wells et al. (
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
98: 1044–9, 2001). The archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) for an Upper Palaeolithic coastal migration is presented in Peter Bellwood’s
Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago
(University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1997) and Gregory Possehl’s and Charles Higham’s articles on south and south-east Asian prehistory, respectively, in
The Oxford Companion to Archaeology
(Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 52–7).

The scenario proposed in this chapter, of populations beachcombing their way to Australia, is similar to one advanced by Jonathan Kingdon in
Self-made Man and His Undoing
(Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993).

The term Great Leap Forward was first applied to the study of human prehistory by Jared Diamond in
The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee
(Vintage, London, 1991) – a fascinating summary of human prehistory. Good sources on the origin of language include Steven Mithen’s
The Prehistory of the Mind
(Phoenix, London, 1996), Steven Pinker’s
The Language Instinct
(William Morrow, New York, 1994) and Parker and McKinney’s
Origins of Intelligence
(Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1999). William Calvin’s
A Brain For All Seasons
(University of Chicago Press, 2002) discusses the impact of climate change on human brain evolution. Thomas Keenan’s
An Introduction to Child Development
(Sage, London, 2002) is a good general overview of this very complicated subject.

Henry Harpending and colleagues’ work on the inference of human population expansions from mitochondrial DNA data is presented in a paper in
Human Biology
(66:761–75, 1994). Much of the information on climate change in Africa and the fossil record in the Middle East was taken from Richard Klein and Stringer and McKie’s books (see above), as well as that of John Gowlett (
Ascent to Civilization
, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984).

The ordering of the Y-chromosome markers discussed in this chapter, and their implications for human migration, appear in Underhill et al.’s 2000
Nature Genetics
and
Annals of Human Genetics
papers (see above). The spread of Y-chromosome lineages along the Eurasian steppe belt is discussed in the Wells et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
paper. A good overview of the central Asian fossil record is Dani and Masson’s
History of the Civilizations of Central Asia
, Volume 1 (UNESCO, Paris, 1992). Lewis Binford’s work on the importance of scavenging in the early human diet has been presented in many publications, one good example being in
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
(4: 292–327, 1985). Cavalli-Sforza’s
work on Chinese populations is discussed in
The History and Geography of Human Genes
(see above).

James Riordan’s
The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon: Siberian Folk Tales
(Interlink Books, New York, 1989) is a great introduction to the stories of Siberia’s native peoples. A good overview of Upper Palaeolithic cave art is Paul Bahn’s
Journey Through the Ice Age
(Seven Dials, London, 1997) – beautifully illustrated with Jean Vertut’s photography.

The first Neanderthal sequence was published by Matthias Krings and his colleagues in
Cell
(90: 19–30, 1997) – truly a landmark paper in the study of human origins. The dating of M173, the major western-European Y-chromosome lineage, is given by Semino et al. in
Science
(290: 1155–9, 2000). Ezra Zubrow’s modelling of Neanderthal demographic patterns is in Stringer and Mellars (eds.),
The Human Revolution
(Edinburgh University Press, 1989, pp. 212–31). Kristen Hawkes’s theory of grandmothering and its effect on human populations is discussed in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
(95: 1336–9, 1998).

Levin and Potapov’s
The Peoples of Siberia
(University of Chicago Press, 1964) is an amazing overview of Siberian anthropology – now sadly out of print. Thomas Jefferson’s only published book,
Notes on the State of Virginia
(W. W. Norton, New York, 1972), is primarily a collection of facts and figures about the state – although the sections on anthropology are worth reading. Richard Klein reviews much of the material on American archaeology in
The Human Career
(see above). James Chatters’s
Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans
(Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001) describes this exciting archaeological find.

The work by Wallace and Torroni on Native American mitochondrial DNA and multiple waves of migration was reviewed by them in
Human Biology
(64: 271–79, 1992), and by Emoke Szathmary in
American Journal of Human Genetics
(53: 793–9, 1993). Underhill et al.’s paper on the Y-chromosome marker M3 appeared in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
(93: 196–200, 1996). Santos et al. and Karafet et al. published their papers on 92R7 and Native American origins in
American Journal of Human Genetics
(64: 619–28 and 64: 817–31, respectively). Joseph Greenberg’s work on Native American languages is reviewed in Merritt Ruhlen’s
A Guide to the World’s Languages
, Volume 1,
Classification
(Stanford University Press, 1987).

The epigraph for this chapter is modified from a creation story in Arthur Cotterell’s
Encyclopedia of World Mythology
(Paragon, Bath, 1999).

A summarized version of Cook’s
Resolution
journal can be found in
The Journals of Captain Cook
(Penguin, London, 1999).

Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s book
Digging up Jericho
(Ernest Benn, London, 1957) is her account of the discovery of the origins of the Near Eastern Neolithic. Brian Fagan’s account of Neolithic origins is given in his
People of the Earth
, cited above. Cavalli-Sforza and his colleagues’ work on the Wave of Advance is summarized in Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza,
Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe
(Princeton University Press, 1984), and in Cavalli-Sforza’s books cited above. Martin Richards et al.’s work on the mtDNA evidence for a Neolithic expansion was published in
American Journal of Human Genetics
(59: 185–203, 1995), and Semino et al.’s work on the Y-chromosome evidence was presented in their paper in Science cited above. David Goldstein and colleagues’ work on the spread of Y-chromosome lineages in south-east Asia can be found in
American Journal of Human Genetics
(68: 432–43, 2001). The discussion of negative aspects of the Neolithic transition is taken from several sources, including Fagan (see above), William McNeill’s
Plagues and Peoples
(Doubleday, New York, 1976) and
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution
(Cambridge University Press, 1992).