Designers and architects are also embracing a new ethos, trying to make more intelligent use of their materials. The architect William McDonough writes of a new “cradle-to-cradle” approach to design, where the goal is to rethink the old models of manufacturing and building. He asks in his book Cradle to Cradle, “What would have happened…if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle, but in reincarnation?” An interesting question, and one that may very well be answered as we search for a new postreligious mythos in the secular world. It’s a question into which Julius might have some insight.
We are at a critical juncture, a time unlike any other in the history of our species, when our culture threatens to destroy the essence of what it means to be human. It is vital that we take lessons from our past in order to better know ourselves, and to guess at where we should go tomorrow. We are in control of our own destinies, perhaps the first generation ever to have such power, but how will we know what to do? My suggestion is that some of these answers should come from Lake Eyasi, as well as Washington, Brussels, and Kyoto.
On January 22, 2003, NASA received its last communication from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. Pioneer had been launched in 1972 as the first object made by humans intended to leave the solar system. When the communication was received, Pioneer was over seven billion miles from earth, far beyond the orbit of Pluto, on a journey that would take it to the red star Aldebaran over the next two million years. It is likely that by the time it is found by extraterrestrial life-forms (assuming they’re out there), the earth will have been absorbed by an expanding sun and the world as we know it today will be but a distant memory.
Attached to its outer cover, Pioneer carries a plaque as a message to other intelligent life. In addition to explaining the location of our planet in the galaxy, it shows a drawing of a man and a woman. They are naked, and the man has his hand raised in a friendly gesture of welcome. Critically, there is no writing on the plaque, no mention of countries or politicians, no descriptions of religions or material wealth. As the first “hello” from our species to life beyond our planet, we chose to emphasize our biological essence.
Pioneer can be seen as a metaphor for the future. Its last feeble radio signal, traveling at the speed of light, took nearly twelve hours to reach earth. This means that when we receive a signal from Pioneer in our present, it is already twelve hours ahead of us, speeding alone into the unknown depths of space. In effect, it has already begun to leave our present behind. By the time it reaches the Aldebaran system, the length of time that will have elapsed since its launch will be similar to that separating us from our ancestor Homo erectus. Human culture will have changed enormously, but we—assuming we are still around—will still be defined by our biology. There is a lesson in this: at the present critical point in human history, where we have the tools to begin to solve some of the problems set in motion by the Neolithic Revolution, saving ourselves will mean accepting human nature, not suppressing it. It will mean reassessing our cultural emphasis on expansion, acquisition, and perfectibility. It will mean learning from peoples that retain a link back to the way we lived for virtually our entire evolutionary history. And it might allow us to stick around for the next two million years.
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks to Jonathan Pritchard of the University of Chicago for discussing his research on the effects of selection on the human genome; to Wolfgang Koppe, Grethe Rosenlund, Alex Obach, and Tor Andre Giskegjerde for explaining their work at the Marine Harvest research center in Stavanger, Norway; and to the fishermen of Kerkennah Islands for showing me their traditional fishing methods. Thanks also to Johann Feilacher and Nina Katschnig of the Haus der Kunstler in Maria Gugging for explaining the fascinating work they are doing with the resident artists, and to the artists themselves for letting me visit their home and see their incredible art. Jayson and Michelle Whitaker kindly hosted me for a long afternoon at their home in Derbyshire and patiently told me the amazing story of their son Charlie’s long medical odyssey. Thanks to the people of Tuvalu for sharing their island paradise and patiently letting me barrage them with questions; thanks also to Gilliane Le Gaillac and Christopher Horner for explaining their work in Tuvalu and introducing me to several of their friends there, to Semese Alefaio for a wonderful day on his family’s motu and the surrounding reef, and to Enate Evi of the Tuvalu Environment Department for taking a meeting with me on fairly short notice. Finally, heartfelt thanks to my friend Julius Indaaya !Um!um!ume for allowing me to spend time with him and his Hadzabe tribe on several occasions, and for his ongoing efforts to preserve his people’s ancient way of life—keep the faith.
Only the author’s name appears on the cover of a book, but of course it takes a team to write one. I want to thank my editor at Random House, Susanna Porter, for believing in this project over the course of the several years it took to deliver, and for patiently reading and commenting on drafts as it metamorphosed into a book. Her deft touch is visible on nearly every page. Thanks also to my agent, Clare Alexander, for her trust in my ability as a writer and for making this project a reality. Thanks to Stefan McGrath and Will Goodlad at Penguin for their continued interest in the book and their supportive comments throughout my writing career—the fact that you’re reading this right now is ultimately due to Stefan’s faith in my work more than a decade ago. Justin Morrill of the M Factory did a terrific job on the line illustrations in the book—they really help the material come to life. Finally, thanks to my wife, Pam, who has put up with my obsessive discussions of early farming techniques and disease statistics, and my all-too-frequent absences. I adore you.
Sources and Further Reading
CHAPTER 1: MYSTERY IN THE MAP
Jonathan Pritchard and colleagues’ paper on selection in the human genome was published in PLoS Biology 4:e72 (March 2006; available online at www.plosbiology.org). While I was writing this book, two other papers were published on the topic: Sabeti et al., Nature 449:913–18 (2007); Hawks et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:20753–58 (2007). In addition, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending (Basic Books, New York, 2009), describes the genetic evidence for recent selection and the authors’ interpretation of the patterns.
Lawrence Angel’s paper on the skeletal evidence for stress as eastern Mediterranean populations adopted agriculture appeared on pages 51–73 of Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture (Academic Press, Orlando, 1984), edited by Mark Nathan Cohen and George J. Armelagos.
CHAPTER 2: GROWING A NEW CULTURE
Carlos Duarte and his colleagues describe the recent rise of aquaculture in Science 316:382–83 (April 2007). The collapse of global fisheries is described by Boris Worm and his colleagues in Science 314:787–90 (2006). Gordon Childe was the author of many books on archaeology and the Neolithic; perhaps the best known are New Light on the Most Ancient East (Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1952) and Man Makes Himself (Watts & Co., London, 1956). The climate maps in Figure 7 were adapted from the much more detailed ones in Petit et al., Episodes 23:230–46 (2000).
The climatic fluctuations at the end of the last ice age are explained in Brian Fagan’s wonderful book The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books, New York, 2004). The imperative to produce more food is discussed in Mark Nathan Cohen’s The Food Crisis in Prehistory (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977). American agronomist and anthropologist Jack Harlan carried out the experiments showing that three weeks of grain gathering can yield enough food to support a family for a year. Dani Nadel’s work on early grain gathering around the Sea of Galilee is described in Science 316:1830–35 (2007). The megafauna extinction patterns shown in Figure 8 were modified from Figure 17.8 in Paul Martin’s contribution to Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, edited by Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein.
© 1984 The University of Arizona Board of Regents, reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. The subject of humans and ancient extinction events is rather controversial within the archaeological and paleo-ecology communities; a good short review can be found in Science 300:885 (2003). A discussion of strontium and the Neolithic diet can be found of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1992), edited by Steve Jones, Robert Martin, and David Pilbeam.
Nikolai Vavilov authored many scientific papers and several books on the origins of crop plants. A good summary can be found in “The Origin, Variation, Immunity and Breeding of Cultivated Plants,” published in Chronica Botanica, Volume 13, 1949. A monumental overview of the origins of cultivated foods is the two-volume Cambridge World History of Food (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2000), edited by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas. Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf’s Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000) is a good review of the subject. Alan Davidson’s fascinating and entertaining Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999) is another great reference work.
Figure 9 is modified from a figure in N. J. van der Merwe’s paper in American Scientist 70:596–606 (1982), reprinted in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution. Zhijun Zhao’s work on early rice domestication is presented in Geoarchaeology 15:203–22 (2000). Andrew Moore and his colleagues’ work at Abu Hureyra is described in the book Village on the Euphrates (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). Susumu Ohno’s work on gene duplication is presented in his book Evolution by Gene Duplication (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1970). The study of the genes involved in domestication was published by Jaenicke-Després and colleagues in Science 302:1206–08 (2003). A thorough—if slightly dated—review of many aspects of hunter-gatherer societies is presented in Man the Hunter (Aldine, New York, 1968), the proceedings of a conference held at the University of Chicago in April 1966. Another good reference is The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1999).
James Mellaart’s work at Çatalhöyük is presented in his book çatal Hüyük: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967), though some of the interpretations of his finds have changed since the book was published. Neolithic Venus figures and the accompanying “goddess cult” are described in Marija Gimbutas’s book The Living Goddesses (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999).
CHAPTER 3: DISEASED
The annual report on obesity in the United States is compiled by the Trust for America’s Health; its most recent report can be found online at healthyamericans.org. Household income data used in Figure 14 appears in the U.S. Census Bureau publication Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2007 American Community Survey, published in 2008. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Harper Perennial, New York, 2002), charting the rise of fast-food culture in the United States, is a modern classic, as is Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin, New York, 2007).
James Neel’s work is described in his autobiography, Physician to the Gene Pool: Genetic Lessons and Other Stories (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994). The data on diabetes in Samoa is taken from a study by Tsai and colleagues published in the American Journal of Human Genetics 69:1236–44 (2001). The Pima Indian diabetes data is from Schulz et al., Diabetes Care 29:1866–1971 (2006). The story of the spread of SARS is readily available at several news sites on the Internet. William McNeill’s book Plagues and Peoples (Anchor, New York, 1976) has had a huge influence on many subsequent works, including Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (W. W. Norton, New York, 1997).
The statistics on malaria were taken from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization. The recent satellite analysis of Angkor by Damien Evans and colleagues, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 104:14277–82 (2007), has revealed it to be far larger than previously thought—more than 380 square miles in area. Jacques Verdrager’s theory on the abandonment of Angkor was published in the journal Médecine tropicale: revue du Corps de S antécolonial, 52:377–84 (1992). Deirdre Joy and colleagues’ work on the ancient origin of falciparum malaria was published in Science 300:318–21 (2003). Sarah Tishkoff’s work on G6PD and recent malarial selection was published in Science 293:455–62 (2001).
The evidence for Neolithic dental work at Mehrgarh was published by Roberto Macchiarelli and his colleagues in Nature 440:755–56 (2006). Clark Spencer Larsen’s work on cavities in North American populations during the agricultural transition is reviewed in his book Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 1997). The data on the increase in obesity in the United States over the past century was taken from Lorens A. Helmchen’s “Can Structural Change Explain the Rise of Obesity? A Look at the Last 100 Years,” published as a discussion paper for the Population Research Center at the National Opinion Research Center and the University of Chicago. Information on the World Health Organization’s estimates of global disease burdens in 2020 is available on the group’s website, www.who.int.
CHAPTER 4: DEMENTED
Leo Navratil’s book on his early work with the artists at Maria Gugging was entitled Schizophrenie und Kunst in German (Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1965). The Haus der Kunstler website URL is www.gugging.org.
Tony Monaco and his colleagues’ work on FOXP2 was published in Nature 413:519–23 (2001). Svante Pääbo and his colleagues’ work on FOXP2 in the Vindija Neanderthal appeared in Nature 418:869–72 (2002). The involvement of the Mount Toba eruption in the population bottleneck that occurred around 70,000 years ago was proposed by Stanley Ambrose in the Journal of Human Evolution 34:623–51 (1998). Christopher Henshilwood and colleagues’ work on the etched ochre from Blombos Cave was published in Science 295:1278–80 (2002). Richard Goldschmidt’s theory on macromutations and “hopeful monsters” was described in his book The Material Basis of Evolution (1940, reissued by Yale University Press, New Haven, 1982). Richard Lenski and colleagues’ computer model for the evolution of complex traits appeared in Nature 423:139–44 (2003). Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of evolutionary spandrels was described in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 205:581–98 (1979). Marshall Sahlins’s reference to the “original affluent society” appeared in Man the Hunter, referenced above.
Toby Lester’s article on the sounds of modern life, “Secondhand Music: The Chance Harmonies of Everyday Sounds May Mean More Than We Think,” appeared in the April 1997 issue of the Atlantic. Clive Gamble’s description of Upper Paleolithic warfare along the Nile appears of his book Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonization (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996). Robin Dunbar’s analysis of neocortex ratio and group size appeared in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16:681–735 (1993), from which Figure 24 was taken. Further discussion of the significance of the number appeared in Louise Barrett, Robin Dunbar, and John Lycett’s textbook Human Evolutionary Psychology (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, U.K., 2001).
The data on antidepressants being the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States comes from the CDC (www.cdc.gov) and appeared in the publication Health, United States, 2007. It was widely reported, notably by CNN, when the report was released.
CHAPTER 5: FAST-FORWARD
Most of the material in the Whitakers’ story was taken from my interview with them, though some of the details were widely reported in 2002–03 on the BBC News website (news.bbc.co.uk). More information on Diamond-Blackfan anemia is available on the website www.diamondblackfan.org.uk.
The data on age at first birth in the United States was taken from the CDC report “National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 51, Number 1: Mean Age of Mother, 1970–2000,” and that on European mothers was taken from Eurostat (
ec.europa.eu/eurostat). The data of IVF success rates was compiled by the CDC in its publication “2005 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Report: National Summary,” available on their website. The 2004 study on PGD and IVF implantation rates was by Magli et al., Human Reproduction 19:1163–69 (2004). The Los Angeles Times article on PGD and IVF success rates was published in the April 27, 2007, edition. Eric Lander’s quote appeared in an article in The Scientist published in January 2002. Ellen Ruppel Shell describes the research efforts on obesity in The Hungry Gene (Grove, New York, 2003).
The French court case in which a child with Down’s syndrome sued for being born was widely reported in the press, for instance in The Independent (U.K.) on November 29, 2001. The survey showing that a majority of people would test for heart disease susceptibility was published in the Journal of Genetic Counseling 18:137–46 (2009). The new project in China tracking children after genetic testing was featured on the CNN news website (www.cnn.com) on August 5, 2009. The testing is being conducted by the Shanghai Biochip Corporation.
Geoffrey Wills’s study of bebop musicians appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry 183:255–59 (2003). Charles Limb and colleagues’ MRI study on jazz musicians was published in the online scientific journal PLoS One (www.plosone.org) on February 27, 2008. Arnold Ludwig’s The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy (Guilford Press, New York, 1995) examines the relationship between creativity and mental illness. David Horrobin describes his theory of the relationship between schizophrenia and creativity in The Madness of Adam and Eve (Bantam, New York, 2002).
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