literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Sun Aug 24, 2003 9:00 am
Subject: The Journey of Man om_namah_shi...

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=70487

Sitaram writes:

It is funny how some trivial incident or remark from our childhood
will stick in our minds, follow us through life, and assume some
important significance in our thinking.

When I was a child, living on a dairy farm, I heard a farmer tell the
following joke:

A wealthy man was taking a walk through the forest, and he came upon
three homeless men sleeping under a tree. (Years ago, such a person
was called "Hobo.") He said to them: "I will give the LAZIEST MAN
here a dollar! Which of you is the laziest?" Immediately, two of
the men jumped up and began in an excited and animated fashion to
describe and praise their laziness, vying in competition for the
dollar prize. The third man didn't move an inch, but continued to lie
in the same position, with his eyes half open. The rich man kicked
him gently and said, "Wake up! What's the matter with you, don't you
want a chance to win the dollar?"

The third man opened his eyes slightly and mumbled "Put it in my
pocket."

I don't know why that old joke came to my mind just now, as I write
about this documentary, "The Journey of Man."

Perhaps, intellectually, we are all a bit like that third lazy
fellow. "Put it in my pocket." We don't want to slave and labor for
our knowledge and insights. We want someone to "put it in our
pocket," or put it in our mind. We look to angels and prophets and
avatars to reveal to us the greatest secrets of the origin and
destiny of the universe and the meaning and purpose of our existence.

I am no better than that third lazy man, always looking to PBS
television and Internet search engines to "put it in my pocket."

I was a vegetarian for many years because of religious
convictions. Watching this documentary made me realize that 50,000
years ago, our ancestors were totally dependent on hunting and
killing and eating meat. Even the Chukchi reindeer herders of today
are totally dependent on their herds for food (meat) and clothing
(skins). It is their reindeer who have the ability to rummage under
the snow and ice and eat the lichen plants (the only source of
vegetable sustenance) which are hidden there. Even the poor Chukchi
are like our third lazy man, unable to dig for lichens themselves or
digest them, but saying to their captive herd of reindeer, "Put it in
my pocket."

I am also struck by the realization that it was the CLEVERNESS of
those ancient hunters, who first learned to TRACK animals by
examining hoofprints and droppings, which was possibly the first sign
of intellectual awakening in man (and not something like the
invention of the wheel). Also, it was the hunting and carnivorous
diet which prompted the vast migration of early man, a migration
which encircled the globe, from west to east, from Africa, through
India to Australia, and through China, across the Bearing Straits,
into the Americas, down to the tip of Peru.

My father, who dislikes religions in general and vegetarianism in
particular, once scolded me for my eating habits, pointing out that a
vegetarian could not have survived during World War II, since the
diet was mostly meat, and the activities were strenuous.

Such "meat" is "food for thought" regarding vegetarianism. But then,
Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, said "I give you weak milk rather
than strong meat." Mark Twain said "censorship is forbidding a man
to eat steak because a baby could not chew it."

..........................................

It was awsome to watch this documentary on the work of Dr. Spencer
Wells. If his theory is true (and I see no reason why it should not
be true), then that tells us something very revealing
about "revealed" religions, with their accounts of Adam and Eve and
the origin of Man.

There is ALSO a female source of genetic markers, passed unchanged
from generation to generation, in the form of mitochondrial DNA.
Mitochondria are organelles within each cell which perform a process
called "the Krebs cycle", burning sugar and creating energy.
Apparently the mitochondria of the newborn child comes from the
mother's and not from the process of fertilization which blends some
of the father's genes with the mother's genes. "The Seven Daughrters
of Eve" by Bryan Sykes documents the results of a study of
mitochondrial DNA.

It is the Y chomosome of males which is passed to their offspring
unchanged, making the study of male genetic codes the key to
unravelling the mystery of mankind's origins.

I had always been aware of some tribe in Africa called "bushmen", who
speak in a language of alien "clicks". Apparently, they their Y-
chromosomes indicate that they are the oldest surviving tribe in the
world, related to that one individual some 50,000 years ago (2000
generations ago), who is the ancestor of all people living in the
world today. The San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest
genetic markers in the world.

At the end of this documentary, Dr. Wells comments that THIS period
in history may be the LAST window of opportunity to do such a study,
while there still exist isolated undisturbed tribes such as the
Bushmen, Chukchi reindeer herders and Kyrgyz nomads and Australian
aborigines. In another 100 years, such tribes and primitive ways of
life may disappear, and intermarriage may obscure the tell-tale
genetic markers of future generations.

=================

http://www.pbs.org/previews/2002fall/joum.html

"Forget everything you know about family and everything you think
you know about race. Incredible new genetic evidence, based on
thousands of blood samples taken across the world over the past
year, shows that all humans alive today are descended from a single
man who lived in Africa some 60,000 years ago. Each and every person
on this planet is part of a connected family of man."

"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. 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."

Dr. Spencer Wells, a 33-year-old geneticist, closed the door on his
laboratory and embarked on the biggest adventure of his life. His
mission: to retrace the most extraordinary journey of all time, a
journey that involves every man, woman and child alive today.

Join Wells in JOURNEY OF MAN as he travels to every continent on
earth, endures every terrain, from the deserts of Namibia to the
frozen extremes of the Russian Arctic, and meets the key human groups
that hold the genetic history of mankind in their blood — including
the African Bushmen, Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, Chukchi
reindeer herders and Kyrgyz nomads. The two-hour program first aired
on PBS Tuesday, January 21, 2003.

This is a true story. Once upon a time the human family numbered only
a few and inhabited one continent, Africa. Then, forced by drought
and famine, this small group left their homeland and embarked on the
most hazardous journey of all time. They didn't stop until they had
reached the very ends of the earth. We are all their children.

Wells has been part of a worldwide team of scientists deciphering
these details for the past 15 years. How? The team has been reading
clues left behind by these ancient travellers, in the blood of
everyone alive today. Humans carry tiny changes in their DNA
sequence — passed on by their ancestors, from grandparents to
ancestral grandparents of 2,000 generations. They are all present in
the genes of the humans of today and will be passed on to the
children of tomorrow. Wells tracks these DNA changes — the map of
human history. Now at last the greatest history story ever is ready
to be told for the first time.

http://www.bevsbest.com/Authors-Books/Spencer-Wells/The-Journey-Of-
Man-by-Spencer-Wells.htm

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 traces human evolution back to our very first ancestor
in The Journey of Man. Along the way, he sums up the explosive effect
of new techniques in genetics on the field of evolutionary biology
and all available evidence from the fossil record.

Wells's seemingly sexist title is purposeful: he argues that the Y
chromosome gives us a unique opportunity to follow our migratory
heritage back to a sort of Adam, just as earlier work in
mitochondrial DNA allowed the identification of Eve, mother of all
Homo sapiens.

While his descriptions of the advances made by such luminary
scientists as Richard Lewontin and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza can be
dry, Wells comes through with sparkling metaphors when it counts, as
when he compares genetic drift to a bouillabaisse recipe handed down
through a village's generations.

Though finding our primal male is an exciting prospect, the real
revolution Wells describes is racial. Or rather, nonracial, as he
reiterates the scientific truth that our notions of what makes us
different from each other are purely cultural, not based in biology.

The case for an "out of Africa" scenario of human migration is solid
in this book, though Wells makes it clear when he is hypothesizing
anything controversial. Readers interested in a fairly technical, but
not overwhelming, summary of the remarkable conclusions of 21st-
century human evolutionary biology will find The Journey of Man a
perfect primer. --Therese Littleton

From the Inside Flap

"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.)

http://enotalone.com/books/ASIN/069111532X.html

This book will blow you away. In clear, easy-to-follow language, with
helpful analogies, Wells describes a scientific and geographical
journey wherein, by means of DNA analysis, he and his fellow
scientists tracked the contemporary "Y" chromosome from two common
ancestors in Africa to the DNA of every living human being.
Unbelievably, there really was one "Adam" and one "Eve" -- although
they lived more than 100,000 years apart -- whose descendants left
Africa about 40,000 years ago and, over 2000 subsequent generations,
were the origin of us all. The understanding that we are all related -
- cousins many thousands of times removed, if you will -- may not
have any immediate effect on politics and social relations, but it
does put our human conflicts into a different context, as well as
blast away most genetically-based theories of race. Although cultures
may differ in many respects, and human beings may subscribe to
different value and belief systems, we really are, genetically, one
human family. I read this book cover-to-cover in one day, and found
it fascinating, astonishing and inspiring. Kudos to Wells and his
crew. Also, those of you who have kids who may be too young to follow
the science in this book should try the video.

I read "The Journey of Man" by Spencer Wells because I saw his
documentary on PBS a few weeks earlier. I immediately followed up by
reading "The Seven Daughrters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes (2001) because
the web site called my attention to it. I'm glad I read Wells first.
He covers the direct-male-line of the human race as traced by the Y-
chromosome, constructing a family tree of the whole world outside of
sub-Saharan Africa. Sykes makes more sense with Wells's study in mind
because he traces only a European family tree based on mytochondrial
DNA, which shows the direct-female-line of descent. He devotes only a
brief chapter at the end to fill out the family tree of the rest of
the human race, including sub-Saharan Africa. It's clear from a page
in Sykes's book that there has been some animosity between the two
schools of thought (the authors have opposite links to Luca Cavalli-
Sforza). Yet it's easy to fit Sykes's argument into Wells's thinking
if you read Wells first; the opposite works less well. The two books
are complementary; one does not refute the other. Both authors agree
that more genetic sampling is needed to complete the picture; the
work has just begun.

Get your own free IRC Chat room