Re: Book review: Out of Eden (Stephen Oppenheimer)
- From: "Douglas Clark" <dgdclynx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 09:53:28 +0100
I was quite fascinated by this book when I bought it three years ago. I
immediately bought Oppenheimers other book on SE Asia. His original idea in
Out of Eden is that the entry into Europe came from a branch of the
migration that travelled up into Mesopotamia and on.
One worry I had was that his DNA expert had left Oxford for a minor
university and I wondered if there was dissension on theories with people
like Sykes. But the book is a must read.
--
Douglas Clark ..................... Bath, Somerset, UK ......
http://usergroup.plus.net .......... http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com
"Anthony Campbell" <ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:slrne4csjh.h5t.ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Stephen Oppenheimer
OUT OF EDEN
The peopling of the world
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Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
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Until recently we had to rely exclusively on archaeology to learn about
how human populations moved in the prehistoric past, but now we have a
new method of investigation, DNA studies. These complement, and in some
cases contradict, the archaeological evidence. In this fascinating book
Stephen Oppenheimer, who is a foremost researcher in the subject,
provides an excellent survey of what has emerged from recent work.
The DNA techniques that have been used are of two kinds. Mitochondrial
DNA tells us about the maternal line of descent; Y chromosome analysis
does the same for the male line. Most accounts of this work make use of
a good deal of jargon, with liberal sprinkling of letters and numbers to
identify the different genetic types, but Oppenheimer has made things
easier for the reader by personalising the principal male and female
lines and giving them names. Thus the main two daughters of the famous
"Mitochondrial Eve" are called Manju and Nasreen. In the male line,
similarly, we have Cain, Abel, and Seth. This certainly helps the reader
to follow the story, as does Oppenheimer's jargon-free style laced with
occasional flashes of humour.
As one would expect, Oppenheimer is firmly of the "Out of Africa"
school, and in fact he thinks that the multi-regional hypothesis is
hardly worth considering in the light of the DNA evidence. All modern
non-African humans, he believes, are descendants of a small band of
people who crossed the southern end of the Red Sea into Arabia about
85,000 years ago.
The migrants followed a beachcomber existence, travelling eastwards
round the shores of the Indian Ocean. They moved surprisingly fast; they
could have taken as little as 6,000 to 10,000 years to reach Perak and
another 4,000 to 10,000 to reach Australia. During this Long March
various subgroups split off from the main body and trekked northwards,
sending offshoots in other directions to east and west as they went. In
many cases they seem to have followed the great rivers. The story
becomes quite complicated at this stage, particularly in connection with
the early explorations of Asia and the Far East.
Oppenheimer ascribes a lot of importance to climatic change, which
played a part in the initial departure from Africa and continued to
influence events subsquently, as forests came and went and sea levels
fell and rose again. Most important of all was the Great Freeze, the
Last Glacial Maximum, which occurred some 20,000 years ago. This
produced far greater disruption and movement of northern human
populations than at any time since, with large areas becoming
uninhabitable although new land emerged farther south as sea levels
fell. The peopling of the Americas occurred in the aftermath of the
Great Freeze and that aubject is treated in the final chapter.
Probably the most dramatic implication of Oppenheimer's theory is what
it says about the origin of Europeans. At one time it was thought that
they were descendants of an earlier exodus from Africa which became
established in the Levant, but this group became extinct about 90,000
years ago so it is difficult to explain the gap of some 50,000 years
between their disappearance and the arrival of the Cro-Magnons.
The majority opinion today is that Europeans arose separately, from a
north African exodus, and it is further assumed that abstract thought,
art, and technology then developed in Europe. Some have even suggested
that language may have arisen at this time. Oppenheimer thinks all this
is the result of complacent Eurocentricism. His view, which he claims is
convincingly supported by the genetic evidence, is that there was only
one exodus from Africa and that Europeans are a side branch from the
original group.
These people left the main route and went north and then west, taking
their already sophisticated art and technology with them and arriving in
Europe 45-50,000 years ago. Far from being the cradle of human culture,
therefore, Europe was the recipient. If anything, in fact, art and
technology declined in Europe subsequently; Oppenheiner finds that the
earliest cave paintings, at Chauvet, are better than those made
subsequently.
Language, too, he believes, is very ancient; it may go back 2.5 million
years. Homo erectus could certainly speak and quite possibly Homo
habilis could too. Our large brains evolved to facilitate language,
according to the principle that cultural change precedes genetic change.
The story told here is one of ever-accelerating cultural and
technological evolution, and Oppenheimer concludes with a look towards
the future and the prospects for our species. These are not necessarily
rosy. First, there is the threat of disease. Because all non-Africans
today arose from a small group of ancestors in the relatively recent
past, we have remarkably little genetic diversity. The result is that we
are dangerously susceptible to worldwide epidemics of infectious agents,
such as we have already seen in the case of AIDS.
On the larger scale, we are still at risk from major climatic change. We
are at present preoccupied with global warming caused by our own
profligate use of fossil fuels, but in the longer term it is certain
that the ice will return. "Taking the long view, the effects of global
warming could be little more than a blip on the way to the next glacial
maximum." If we do survive, Oppenheimer believes, we may or may not be
biologically different, but we will certainly be culturally different.
This is one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books on human
origins I have read for a long time. The book is fully accessible to
non-specialists; at the same time it contains comprehensive notes and
discussion of alternative theories so it is suited to an academic as
well as a general audience.
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%T Out of Eden
%S The peopling of the world
%A Stephen Oppenheimer
%I Constable
%C London
%D 2003, 2004
%G ISBN 1-84119-894-3
%P xxi + 440
%K anthropology, evolution
%O paperback edition
%O illustrated
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--
Anthony Campbell - ac@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)
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