https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/a-brief-history-of-everyone-who-ever-lived-by-ad...

A good summary of where we are with the study of human genes, genetics and genomes, a subject that I have thought about at great length during my genealogical investigations and also my previous pieces on Richard III and the most recent common ancestor. (Rutherford covers both of these topics in detail.) He goes into the very slender genetic basis for race, criminal disposition or many other characteristics that have been said to be biologically predetermined, and explains why it is More Complicated Than That.

In other words, my prejudices were reinforced, but authoritatively, and although the style gets a little too jocular in places for my taste, I still recommend it strongly. ( )

A discussion of mostly human genetics by a British geneticist and broadcaster that looks at genetics from a broad viewpoint with emphasis on modern findings from analysis of our genome. Like many science books for non-scientific readers, there are many digressions and explanations increasing readability and leading to some disorganization.

Topics discussed include:
The seven species of genus Homo that we know about and our relationship to them. So-called cavemen were not hunched over.
The early inhabitants of continental Europe and Britain. Lactose intolerance. Blue eye color. Red hair. The absence of Danish DNA in the British genome.
Iceland. Its history and genetics.
The Plague. Its history and genetics.
American Indians. Their history and genetics. The Havasupai. Kennewick man. Alcoholism.
Genetic genealogy companies. How misleading are their advertisements and results? The web-like nature of any sufficiently long family tree, or we are all cousins. Furthermore, all sufficiently ancient people, if they had offspring, are everyone’s ancestor.
The discovery of the remains of Richard III. An estimate that out of 100 people, two were not sired by their apparent father.
Jack the Ripper.
Inbreeding in the Hapsburg dynasty. The inbreeding coefficient, F. Inbreeding in the Darwin family, Pakistanis, Roma, Icelanders, Jews, Finns, Persians, Indians.
The work of Francis Galton. Eugenics.
The concept of Race and the genetic indications that it does not exist. Adaptionism or Panglossianism. Types of earwax. Linkage disequilibrium. The EDAR gene. Tay Sachs disease. That if a typical Caucasian encounters two random Negroes, the Negroes are likely to be more genetically different from each other than either is from the Caucasian. The fallacy of African American traits deriving from slavery.
The Human Genome Project. The definition of a gene and how many do we have? The exome is less than 2% of our total DNA. Transcription factors, introns, and pseudogenes. An excellent analogy using a progressively modified English sentence to show how our DNA is organized (or how it isn’t).
The evolution of the biblical Hebrew word alma into the Greek Parthenos into the English “virgin”.
The evolution of our understanding of diseases and traits that were formerly thought to be simple
Mendelian, e.g. tongue rolling and cystic fibrosis.
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and the mystery of the missing heritability. Manhattan plots.
The misuse of genetic findings in criminal law. Monoamine oxidase A. The examination of the genome of the Sandy Hook murderer. Typical newspaper articles entitled, “Science discovers the gene for...”
Epigenetics. The Hongerwinter. An excellent analogy of the performance of a musical score by an orchestra over time for epigenetics. Methylization of cytosine.
The current and future evolution of our species. Tetrachromatic vision. Sensitivity to succinylcholine in the Vaishya. Infant mortality rates.

Words of interest include: gigglemug and ackamarackus.

Other notes:
The Forer effect (Bertram Forer). People conclude that broadly true statements are accurate for themselves personally. The way that astrology or the I Ching works.

Betteridge’s Law. If a headline poses a question, the answer is likely to be no.

The color scheme of pink for boys’ bedrooms and blue for girls was common in Victorian England.

"In the early 20th century the 5000 meters race was dominated by Finns. A German writer wrote that “Running is certainly in the blood of every Finn...[They] are like animals in the forest.”" [This reminds me of those in the early 20th century in the US who claimed that the Irish had a genetic proclivity for playing baseball, and incredible as it seems today, similar comments were made about Jews and basketball in the 1930s.] ( )

Love it. This is what I wanted, a review of what all has been learned since I left university. I thought I was prepared, but I'm a little surprised by how much has been refined or overturned. Man I love science. ( )

* I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review a pre-publication copy of this book *

"This is a story about you". It's hard to think of a first sentence more likely to engage a reader and beguile them into a 400-page dissertation on DNA and evolution. It gets right to the point and demands attention.

Soon after, Adam Rutherford sums up human evolution as "one big million-year clusterf*ck", and you know that this is not going to be just any science book. And so it proves. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is erudite and entertaining, informative and occasionally cerebral.

The book starts with the rise of hominids and the migrations of homo sapiens out of Africa, showing how DNA recovered from fossil finds enabled these migratory pathways to be better understood. For example, DNA has shown that India was settled from both the south and the north, but that both North and South America were settled from the north. Our DNA also shows that homo sapiens and neanderthals interbred.

Rutherford tackles the paradox of "family tree" thinking, which ultimately leads to a point where the number of putative ancestors exceeds the number of people on earth at the time. Oddly, this means that, around the time of Richard II, everybody in Europe was an ancestor of everybody with European descent today. We are apparently all descended from royalty and we all have Viking ancestry.

I found his account of the Hapsburg's inbreeding and the DNA identification of Richard III's remains really interesting, but Rutherford's most potent writing is on race, and he is abundantly clear that there is no genetic basis for the concept of "race". The genetic triggers for skin pigmentation are the same in African and Indian people, yet we perceive these people as being of different "races". The same goes for other characteristics that are used to label a person as being of a certain race. There is no gene for race, and only a tiny number of our 22,000 genes account for the physical differences that we typically use to distinguish between races. We are overwhelmingly more similar than different, wherever we are from.

While I did struggle with some of the concepts in this book, Rutherford's clear explanations and waspish humour kept me engaged throughout what was a fascinating read. ( )

Wonderful book, very readable, about human genetics, and how closely all people around the globe are related to each other. Look at everyone at the UN General Assembly and say to yourself “Every single person there is my cousin!” ( )