Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors in Science and Inquiry

Oct 14, 2014 Jim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, 2non-fiction, 1audio, historical

Review: This review will be in 2 parts; an overview of how I felt about it & a bunch of notes on interesting things I want to remember about it.

This book puts together, in layman's terms, the results of anthropologists, biologists, & gene mapping into a comprehensive history of the human race. Since DNA testing is now possible & the human genome project is done, they can sample areas (generally people don't move far from where they're born) & see when & where they came from. Gene changes aren't ...more

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Mar 26, 2016 Charlene rated it did not like it

Shelves: worst-books-ever

I cannot believe it took me 3/4 of the book to realize who this author was. I really could have saved myself a lot of time if I had only connected the name with his newer, even more racist, book.

This book had an incredible amount of potential. It highlights all the best material I learned in my Anthropology of Evolution class. Wade uses a mix of solid science (some stellar science, actually) and a bunch of unsubstantiated old school evolutionary psychology bullshit to tell the epic story of huma I cannot believe it took me 3/4 of the book to realize who this author was. I really could have saved myself a lot of time if I had only connected the name with his newer, even more racist, book.

This book had an incredible amount of potential. It highlights all the best material I learned in my Anthropology of Evolution class. Wade uses a mix of solid science (some stellar science, actually) and a bunch of unsubstantiated old school evolutionary psychology bullshit to tell the epic story of human ancestry from as early as the evidence will allow, to help the reader understand their human lineage.

This book was like a roller coaster. One minute Wade would present a balanced and thrilling description of some evolution phenomenon, e.g. evolution of language, in which he would present hypotheses from contradictory sources, so that his reader could understand what the experts are saying. He is so good at delivering up the arguments for both sides, it is surprising that he, at times, becomes absolutely incapable of seeing more than one skewed (and unscientific) side to various arguments. Immediately after presenting excellent science, Wade would begin presenting pretty shoddy evidence to make an argument, e.g humans are naturally aggressive and that violence was high in prehistoric times and is lower now. To make the aggression argument, Wade used the old, tired "chimps are aggressive, and since chimps are our closes ancestors, we too must have been this aggressive," argument. Never mind that he didn't even mention the species bonobo, who we actually have more in common with than non-bonobo chimps. In addition to that, the aggressive chimps studies themselves have an observation bias effect. The aggression is much higher in chimps than bonobos, but it may not be as high as we once thought.

Wade repeatedly used chimps as our model, without any actual evidence from genetics or from artifacts or fossils to back it up. And why? Because *no such evidence exists*. The implications became more clear as the book went on and Wade explained how our white ancestors were superior in intelligence to our black ancestors. He did this by using genetic "evidence" that has not been substantiated in any way. Main stream science is against him on this. I could not believe what I was reading. I had gotten over my annoyance with his bad aggression research and decided to ignore it, because so many things in this book were presented and supported with excellent science. When I read about how our Caucasian ancestors had superior brains, I felt shocked. I was about to email my anthropology of evolution professor and ask her, "Who was that guy who wrote that unbelieveable racists and scientifically inaccurate book?" Then I sat down at my computer and typed in "Nicholas Wade racist," and sure enough, this 2006 book was followed by his even more racist book in 2014.

This is what the Dawkins, Pinker, Buss, Fisher, and other old school neo-Darwinist thinking leads to. I cannot wait until the "gene jocks" are fully replaced once epigenetics and thermodynamics make their way into the Modern Synthesis of Evolution. I have had enough science backed racism to last a lifetime.
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May 15, 2011 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing

Shelves: archaeology, biology, linguistics

While this isn't an easy book to read, I've learned a lot about our ancestors. I had never realized how warlike they were in the distant past. We took after chimpanzees in that regard. Also, our ancestors were often cannibals, afraid to say. The most interesting aspect of the book is the synthesis of a wide variety of evidence; archaeology, genetics, linguistics, anthropology/sociology, animal behavior and anatomy. ...more

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Aug 24, 2013 Steve Van Slyke rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, evolution, genetics, kindle, paleoanthropology

Having just read Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived by Chip Walter, and being somewhat unimpressed, I was a little leery of reading another book on more or less the same subject by another non-scientist author. However, Nicholas Wade almost immediately won me over with his smooth flowing narrative and excellent writing style. Plus his knowledge of the subject matter did not suffer by approaching it from the outside, at least not for this lay reader.

Wade be ...more

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Mar 29, 2009 bup rated it it was amazing

Shelves: i-m-better-than-you, 2009, favorites

Nicholas Wade has put into one cohesive book - based on compiling hundreds of scientists' work - a flowing, incredibly reconstructed history of humans before history. Through archaeology, genetics (and not always human genetics) and logic, Wade shows persuasive and ingenious arguments for many human milestones: when we became anatomically modern; when we became behaviorally modern; when, where and how agriculture developed; when language evolved and what the first language sounded like; when mus ...more

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Jan 16, 2011 Cassandra Kay Silva rated it really liked it

Shelves: science

The thing about this book was that despite the fact that it was really good and had a lot of great information, I couldn't help but feel like the author put a lot of so called "data" in it that was somewhat unverifiable and drawing many conclusions that I think were premature. On the whole though I really did enjoy the book and it had so much good information in it that it was really hard to put down. ...more

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