The Search for Eve - Hardcover

Brown, Michael Harold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060160551 ISBN 13: 9780060160555

Publisher: Harpercollins, 1990

Synopsis

In 1987, a group of California scientists announced that they had traced the entire natural history of humankind to its single common ancestor, a woman who lived in Africa more than 200,000 years ago. Investigative journalist Brown tells the story, setting it in the context of recent paleoanthropic discoveries. For a general audience. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

In 1987 a team of American geneticists shook the scientific world with their "theory of Eve." Homo sapiens sapiens , they claimed, arose in east Africa a mere 200,000 years ago; all people alive today were said to have descended from a single hominid female. She and her small, elite band of fledgling humans, in this thoery, fanned out to replace older, "more ape-manlike" populations in Europe, Asia and elsewhere in Africa through competition or warfare. This scenario, based on a global analysis of mitochondrial DNA (genetic material inherited solely through the mother), has been challenged on several fronts: fossil movement does not support a massive spread of tools from Africa to Eurasia; mitochondrial sampling and recently unearthed fossils suggest an Asian, not an African, origin for full-fledged humans; some scientists even place "Eve," if she existed, in the Middle East. Brown ( The Toxic Cloud ) in this captivating report gives space to the objections while highlighting the "Eve" hypothesis that continues to divide geneticists and paleoanthropologists.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book attempts to offer general readers an account of mitochondrial DNA studies in 1986-87 which suggested a common ancestor for all living human beings, a female living in Africa around 200,000 years ago. The popular press called her "Eve." Brown describes the background of this discovery, its key players, and resulting academic controversy. Unfortunately, the book fails on all counts. Brown (whose previous books concern environmental issues) displays a shallow grasp of his subject and some basic misconceptions about evolution. He seems to have exaggerated the academic warfare to jazz up his story, and in expanding the material to book length, he has produced a somewhat repetitious account of events better explained elsewhere, e.g., in Delta Willis's The Hominid Gang ( LJ 9/1/89). Not recommended.
-Beth Clewis, J. Sargeant Reynolds Community Coll., Richmond, Va.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harpercollins
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0060160551
• ISBN 13: 9780060160555
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352