In The Journey of Man, renowned geneticist and
anthropologist Spencer Wells traced human evolution back to our
earliest ancestors, creating a remarkable and readable map of our
distant past. Now, in his thrilling new book, he examines our
cultural inheritance in order to find the turning point that led us
to the path we are on today, one he believes we must veer from in
order to survive.
Pandora’s Seed takes us on a powerful and provocative
globe-trotting tour of human history, back to a seminal event
roughly ten thousand years ago, when our species made a radical
shift in its way of life: We became farmers rather than
hunter-gatherers, setting in motion a momentous chain of events
that could not have been foreseen at the time.
Although this decision to control our own food supply is what
propelled us into the modern world, Wells demonstrates—using the
latest genetic and anthropological data—that such a dramatic shift
in lifestyle had a downside that we’re only now beginning to
recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made humans more
sedentary and unhealthy and made the planet more crowded. The
expanding population and the need to apportion limited resources
such as water created hierarchies and inequalities. The desire to
control—and no longer cooperate with—nature altered the concept of
religion, making deities fewer and more influential, foreshadowing
today’s fanaticisms. The proximity of humans and animals bred
diseases that metastasized over time. Freedom of movement and
choice were replaced by a pressure to work that is the forebear of
the anxiety and depression millions feel today. Wells offers a
hopeful prescription for altering a life to which we were always
ill suited, recommending that we change our priorities and
self-destructive appetites before it’s too late.
A riveting and accessible scientific detective story, Pandora’s
Seed is an eye-opening book for anyone fascinated by the past
and concerned about the future.
關於作者：
Spencer Wells is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National
Geographic Society and Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of ’56 Professor at
Cornell University. He leads the Genographic Project, which is
collecting and analyzing hundreds of thousands of DNA samples from
people around the world in order to decipher how our ancestors
populated the planet. Wells received his Ph.D. from Harvard
University and conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford and Oxford.
He has written two books, The Journey of Man and Deep Ancestry. He
lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, a documentary
filmmaker.
目錄：
Foreword
One: Mystery in the Map
Two: Growing a New Culture..
Three: Diseased
Four: Demented
Five: Fast-Forward
Six: Heated Argument
Seven: Toward a New Mythos . .
Acknowledgments
Sources and Further Reading
Index
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