Denisovans

Reveals the profound influence of the Denisovans and their hybrid descendants upon the flowering of human civilization around the world • Traces the migrations of the sophisticated Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations more than 40,000 years ago • Shows how Denisovan hybrids became the elite of ancient societies, including the Adena mound-building culture • Explores the Denisovans’ extraordinary advances, including precision-machined stone tools and jewelry, tailored clothing, and celestially-aligned architecture Ice-age cave artists, the builders at Göbekli Tepe, and the mound-builders of North America all share a common ancestry in the Solutreans, Neanderthal-human hybrids of immense sophistication, who dominated southwest Europe before reaching North America 20,000 years ago. Yet, even before the Solutreans, the American continent was home to a powerful population of enormous stature, giants remembered in Native American legend as the Thunder People. New research shows they were hybrid descendants of an extinct human group known as the Denisovans, whose existence has now been confirmed from fossil remains found in a cave in the Altai region of Siberia. Tracing the migrations of the Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas, Andrew Collins and Greg Little explore how the new mental capabilities of the Denisovan-Neanderthal and Denisovan-human hybrids greatly accelerated the flowering of human civilization over 40,000 years ago. They show how the Denisovans displayed sophisticated advances, including precision-machined stone tools and jewelry, tailored clothing, celestially-aligned architecture, and horse domestication. Examining evidence from ancient America, the authors reveal how Denisovan hybrids became the elite of the Adena mound-building culture, explaining the giant skeletons found in Native American burial mounds. The authors also explore how the Denisovans’ descendants were the creators of a cosmological death journey and viewed the Milky Way as the Path of Souls. Revealing the impact of the Denisovans upon every part of the world, the authors show that, without early man’s hybridization with Denisovans, Neanderthals, and other yet-to-be-discovered hominid populations, the modern world as we know it would not exist.

Even with all our modern technology and advanced science, we still know relatively little about the origins of our fascinating species. We have an idea about the natural processes that have led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as we know ourselves today as well as the nature of some of our ancestors. We also possess insight into other archaic human species that we once shared this planet with. Even though we have these bits of information and a general picture of what happened, much about our origins and early history remains mysterious.

Where did we come from? What were our ancestors like? Why do we differ from other animals? How do scientists trace and construct our evolutionary history? The Evolution of Our Tribe: Hominini provides answers to these questions and more. The book explores the field of paleoanthropology past and present. Beginning over 65 million years ago, Welker traces the evolution of our species, the environments and selective forces that shaped our ancestors, their physical and cultural adaptations, and the people and places involved with their discovery and study. It is designed as a textbook for a course on Human Evolution but can also serve as an introductory text for relevant sections of courses in Biological or General Anthropology or general interest. It is both a comprehensive technical reference for relevant terms, theories, methods, and species and an overview of the people, places, and discoveries that have imbued paleoanthropology with such fascination, romance, and mystery.

An influential geneticist traces his investigation into the genes of humanity's closest evolutionary relatives, explaining what his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has revealed about their extinction and the origins of modern humans.

Explore the latest research in anthropological genetics and understand the genome’s role in cultural and social development A Companion to Anthropological Genetics illustrates the role of genetic analysis in advancing the modern study of human origins, populations, evolution, and diversity. Broad in scope, this essential reference work establishes and explores the relationship between genetic research and the major questions of anthropological study. Through contributions by leading researchers, this collection explores molecular genetics and evolutionary mechanisms in the context of macro- and microevolution, paleontology, phylogeny, diet, and disease, with detailed explanations of quantitative methods, including coalescent and approximate Bayesian computation. With an emphasis on contextualizing new and developing genetic research within anthropological frameworks, this text offers critical perspective on the conditions of molecular evolution that accompany cultural and social transformation, while also addressing critical disciplinary questions, such as the ethical issues surrounding ancestry testing and community-based genetic research. Acts as an essential reference on the contributions of genetic science to the field of anthropology Features new work by leading researchers of the field Explores the evolution of immunity, including the genetics and epigenetics of pathogens, chronic illness, and disease resistance Provides in-depth examination of mutation and dietary adaptation, including AMY1, lactase persistence, and sensory polymorphisms Explains essential quantitative and phylogenetic methods for aligning genomic analysis with evolution and migration time scales Offering thorough coverage on leading questions and developing research, A Companion to Anthropological Genetics is a comprehensive resource for students and scholars.

The past few years have witnessed a revolution in our ability to obtain DNA from ancient humans. This important new data has added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations living today are mixes of ancient ones, and often carry a genetic component from archaic humans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial âpurity.' Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?

The acclaimed writer shares an intimate portrait of his former mentor V.S. Naipaul in this memoir of their thirty-year friendship and sudden falling out. Paul Theroux was a young aspiring writer when he met the legendary V.S. Naipaul in Uganda in 1966. There began a friendship that would span continents as both men ascended the ranks of literary stardom. Naipaul’s early encouragement of Theroux’s talent had a profound impact on him—yet the apprenticeship was not always easy. This heartfelt and revealing account of Theroux's thirty-year friendship with Naipaul explores the unique effect each writer had on the other. Built around exotic landscapes, anecdotes that are revealing, humorous, and melancholy, and three decades of mutual history, this is a personal account of how one develops as a writer and how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life. A New York Times Notable Book

Ancestral DNA, Human Origins, and Migrations describes the genesis of humans in Africa and the subsequent story of how our species migrated to every corner of the globe. Different phases of this journey are presented in an integrative format with information from a number of disciplines, including population genetics, evolution, anthropology, archaeology, climatology, linguistics, art, music, folklore and history. This unique approach weaves a story that has synergistic impact in the clarity and level of understanding that will appeal to those researching, studying, and interested in population genetics, evolutionary biology, human migrations, and the beginnings of our species. Integrates research and information from the fields of genetics, evolution, anthropology, archaeology, climatology, linguistics, art, music, folklore and history, among others Presents the content in an entertaining and synergistic style to facilitate a deep understanding of human population genetics Informs on the origins and recent evolution of our species in an approachable manner

2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist "Science book of the year"—The Guardian One of New York Times 100 Notable Books for 2018 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Books of 2018 One of Kirkus's Best Books of 2018 One of Mental Floss's Best Books of 2018 One of Science Friday's Best Science Books of 2018 “Extraordinary”—New York Times Book Review "Magisterial"—The Atlantic "Engrossing"—Wired "Leading contender as the most outstanding nonfiction work of the year"—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities... But, Zimmer writes, “Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are—our appearance, our height, our penchants—in inconceivably subtle ways.” Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors—using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates—but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it. Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

New evidence showing that the earliest origins of human culture, religion, and technology derive from the lost world of the Denisovans • Explains how Göbekli Tepe and the Giza pyramids are aligned with the constellation of Cygnus and show evidence of enhanced sound-acoustic technology • Traces the origins of Göbekli Tepe and the Giza pyramids to the Denisovans, a previously unknown human population remembered in myth as a race of giants • Shows how the ancient belief in Cygnus as the origin point for the human soul is as much as 45,000 years old and originally came from southern Siberia Built at the end of the last ice age around 9600 BCE, Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey was designed to align with the constellation of the celestial swan, Cygnus--a fact confirmed by the discovery at the site of a tiny bone plaque carved with the three key stars of Cygnus. Remarkably, the three main pyramids at Giza in Egypt, including the Great Pyramid, align with the same three stars. But where did this ancient veneration of Cygnus come from? Showing that Cygnus was once seen as a portal to the sky-world, Andrew Collins reveals how, at both sites, the attention toward this star group is linked with sound acoustics and the use of musical intervals “discovered” thousands of years later by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras. Collins traces these ideas as well as early advances in human technology and cosmology back to the Altai-Baikal region of Russian Siberia, where the cult of the swan flourished as much as 20,000 years ago. He shows how these concepts, including a complex numeric system based on long-term eclipse cycles, are derived from an extinct human population known as the Denisovans. Not only were they of exceptional size--the ancient giants of myth--but archaeological discoveries show that this previously unrecognized human population achieved an advanced level of culture, including the use of high-speed drilling techniques and the creation of musical instruments. The author explains how the stars of Cygnus coincided with the turning point of the heavens at the moment the Denisovan legacy was handed to the first human societies in southern Siberia 45,000 years ago, catalyzing beliefs in swan ancestry and an understanding of Cygnus as the source of cosmic creation. It also led to powerful ideas involving the Milky Way’s Dark Rift, viewed as the Path of Souls and the sky-road shamans travel to reach the sky-world. He explores how their sound technology and ancient cosmologies were carried into the West, flowering first at Göbekli Tepe and then later in Egypt’s Nile Valley. Collins shows how the ancient belief in Cygnus as the source of creation can also be found in many other cultures around the world, further confirming the role played by the Denisovan legacy in the genesis of human civilization.