Pandora's Seed by Spencer Wells

Pandora's Seed by Spencer Wells

This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. What do terrorism, pandemic disease, and global warming have in common? To find the answer we need to go back ten millennia, to the wheat fields of the Fertile Crescent and the rice paddies of southern China. It was at that point that our species made a radical shift in its way of life. We had spent millions of years of evolution eking out a living as hunter-gatherers. When we learned how to control our food supply, though, we became as gods-we controlled the world rather than it controlling us. But with godliness comes responsibility. By sowing seeds thousands of years ago, we were also sowing a new culture-one that has come with many unforeseen costs. Taking us on a 10,000-year tour of human history and a globe-trotting fact-finding mission, Pandora's Seed charts the rise to power of Homo agriculturis and the effect this radical shift in lifestyle has had on us. Focusing on three key trends as the final stages of the agricultural population explosion play out over this century, Wells speculates on the significance of our newfound ability to modify our genomes to better suit our unnatural culture, fast-forwarding our biological adaptation to the world we have created. But what do we stand to lose in the process? Climate change, a direct result of billions of people living in a culture of excess accumulation, threatens the global social and ecological fabric. It will force a key shift in our behavior, as we learn to take the welfare of future generations into account. Finally, the rise of religious fundamentalism over the past half-century is explained as part of a backlash against many of the trends set in motion by the agricultural population explosion and its inherent inequality. Ultimately, the world's present state of crisis will force us to evolve culturally, but can we self-correct our culture to solve these problems that we ourselves, in our race to succeed, have caused?

Spencer Wells is a leading population geneticist and director of the Genographic Project, a collaboration between National Geographic, IBM, and the Waitt Family Foundation. His fascination with the past has led the scientist, author, and documentary filmmaker to the farthest reaches of the globe in search of human populations who hold the history of humankind in their DNA.
The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, an award-winning book and documentary, aired on PBS in the U.S. and National Geographic Channel internationally. Written and presented by Wells, the film chronicled his globe-circling, DNA-gathering expeditions in 2001-02 and laid the groundwork for the Genographic Project.
His second book, Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project, was published by National Geographic and has been one of NGBooks's best-selling science narratives. His third book, Pandora's Seed, was published last year by Random House.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781400062157
ISBN 10	1400062152
Title	Pandora's Seed
Author	Spencer Wells
Condition	Unavailable
Binding type	Microfilm
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2010-06-08
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable