"Journey of Man" - Did anyone see this, or read the book?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Mrs. Edge

Bono's Belly Dancing Friend
Joined
Jun 5, 2001
Messages
2,913
Location
Torontonian in Maryland
The other day I saw a program on PBS called "The Journey of Man"

In a nutshell it says that all humans on earth are descended not from neanderthals (a similar species but not nearly as clever and sophiticated - no artwork or advanced tools for example) from one man, or group of people who lived in Africa. The original "template" genetically is the bushmen in Africa. They are still totally isolated, so their genes remain mostly unchanged and are also the only people who use clicks in their language. Their faces interestingly all have components of the different races we see today.

Then one small group left Africa 50,000 years ago, and went to Australia via India. This is found in the gene samples of aboriginies and people on the southern coast of India. Another group went to Europe, Central Asia and China. Because they lived in remote communities, they all developed specific traits, like the europeans went white because their skin didn't need the pigmentation as protection from the sun, the ones in the arctic became smaller to deal with the cold, etc. The people in Eurasia moved on through the arctic to Alaska and became the first native Americans/Canadians. They were able to cross because of the ice age 20,000 years ago when the oceans were receded.

So, for those of you that take the bible literally, do you think if this is true, that Adam and Eve were actually bushmen in Africa?

Here below is some info about the book/program.




Around 60,000 years ago, a man--identical to us in all important respects--lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races?

Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they fought, loved, and influenced.

Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups, and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be accounted for by just ten individuals.

It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind--as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries, questions now more compelling than ever.

Spencer Wells was formerly head of the population genetics research group at Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and is currently a consultant to the biotechnology industry. The writer and presenter of the science film The Journey of Man, he has been a consulting scientist for several other film productions.

Endorsements:

"Written with much verve, easy to read, and up-to-date on many important developments."--Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Stanford University, author of The History and Geography of Human Genes and Genes, Peoples, and Languages.

"Spencer Wells, whose genetic work has contributed to our understanding of human prehistory, has provided the lay reader with an account of the spread and mixing of the human species from its origin in Africa that is both scientifically accurate and accessible to the nonscientist. In achieving that accessibility, he has not made the common error of confusing simple explanations with simplistic ones. Most important, Wells has the intellectual integrity, all too rare in popularizations of science, to distinguish what is really known from what is only speculation."--Richard Lewontin, Harvard University, author of It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions.
 
Yes I watched it. It was an excellent program.. The science seemed pretty reliable to me. It seemed much more plausible than other theories. It was interesting how each culture had their own belief about their origins. And that a scientific explanation that stated their people were not the first humans, almost offended them. It made me think of how many religions claim they have the one truth.

I don?t look for science in the bible. It is hard for me to believe that any educated person could believe that humans are only 6000-7000 years from their beginning.
 
Back
Top Bottom