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Before The Dawn: Recovering The Lost History Of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade
01/04/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Duckworth. 204 page enlarged paperback. Price: £ 7.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-7156-3609-X. Buy Before The Dawn: Recovering The Lost History Of Our Ancestors in the USA - or Buy Before The Dawn: Recovering The Lost History Of Our Ancestors in the UK  check out website: check out website: www.ducknet.co.uk
One thing I find awfully appealing about a lot of the science books that are on the market these days is that they are targeting a bigger audience and avoiding the stuffiness of earlier tomes. In other words, you shouldn't feel intimidated by such books.
Nicholas Wade's book, 'Before The Dawn', might have an over-long title but it also neatly sums up the subject matter. Actually, it covers a lot more than the dawn of mankind but also the roots and migration across the continents and connections across the gene pool.
It also looks at the development of tribes, language and religion carried in its wake. Wade seems surprised that so few people in earlier times had the migratory habit but looking at how people today can live in the shadows of active volcanoes and earthquake lines tends, to my way of thinking, indicate few have the gypsy spirit to wander and happy to settle.
Another very interesting fact that came out of the book is how some anthropologists have fallen into the trap of thinking that earlier people were peaceful rather than war-like. An interesting statistic is that the losses in any war always hits the magic 30% before stopping. An old problem of seeing others as you see yourself than a proper look at the evidence of the early investigators who thought early Man would be a lot more peaceful and were wrong also comes to light. Through this book, I'm glad to see that attitude changing and nice to see such dogmas aren't restricted to the other sciences.
OK, so you're a neo or serious SF writer, what does this book really help you to understand? Well, it gives a terrific insight into how Man evolved and spread out across the world. An important lesson also indicates that when Man is happy with himself, he becomes complacent and weak. When there is something there to struggle against, then that is the time for his spirit to rise and do something.
All useful lessons that can be applied in our kinds of realities let alone the need to fill in some useful background information on genetics and how human movement can be traced through the Y male chromosome and the mitochondria in females. How adaptations to ward of particular illnesses were lucky chances. More importantly, how the division of genes in mating can also lose vital information from the gene pool. Something very important to remember when you're building your colony ships and colonising alien worlds.
If you've never really explored this subject before then this book will give you a good grounding and at such a reasonable price should be included in your subject matter.
GF Willmetts
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