A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution - The Ancestor's Tale

This book is not really about the evolution vs creationism issue. That issue is settled in science and only lives on in the minds of the willfully ignorant, some of whom choose to launch an "internet crusade" against Dr Dawkins.

Rather, this book is an odessey of evolution, from ourselves through our ancestors back in time. It is a worthy tale, if a bit detailed at times. Our path has been very contingent and very fascinating. But for all the detail, the point is one of raw awe.

If you want to "learn" about evolution, other texts will serve far better (ie Maynard Smith - Evolution). If you want the definitive refutation of creationism, "The Blind Watchmaker" is still unsurpassed.

However, if you want to place a little "wonder" or "awe" into your scientific outlook - this book is a fair attempt.

Four stars would be appropriate, but the creationist fringe should be counterbalanced - even if "voting" is not the means of validating theory (much to their woe).

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is there any more frightening reflection of the state of our nation than that a forum devoted to BOOK REVIEWS has devolved (har) into a display of incoherent fundamentalist ranting? You can practically see the spittle on the screen of these alleged "reviewers"! And take note of the fact that so few of them make any sense at all. The fact is that Richard Dawkins is an excellent writer who never condescends to readers regardless of their backgrounds, and who presents his SCIENCE with crystalline prose and incisive logic. "Ancestor's Tale" is an original take on understanding evolution, which has nothing to do with the superstitious and pseudoscientific hogwash being presented as "intelligent design" theory. If you can separate religion and science, you will love this book and learn much about the world around us. Try Dawkins' other excellent books as well, especially "Blind Watchmaker." If you prefer to handle snakes and burn books rather than read them, look elsewhere for a way to spend your time. It's as simple as that.

I'd recommend this book to any first year biology students as a great introduction to genetic history and evolution. But it doesn't work so well as a casual read. Dawkins needs to revise and make this text a bit more to the point, because if you don't have a strong intrest in the topic, you'll probably put this down before you get a quarter of the way through.

If I were an Evolutionist rather than a Naturalistic Parallelist, I would certainly give this book 5 stars. Dawkins does a superb job of presenting the data and attempting to make the case for the speculative theoretical belief of Evolution (i.e., the theory of common descent). Clearly, of the several books I have by Dawkins, this one represents some of his best work. However, since the author adopts, and is even a primary evangelical of, the false epistemology of Evolutionism --- an inadequate ideology that has led ultimately to the over extended maintenance of error, Evolution --- I can give the book but 4 stars.

Minor negatives include the lack of blank end papers for reader notes and also the lack of a glossary. Due to the various ways that words are defined and used by natural historians, often differing even within the discipline itself, all natural history books ought, in my view, contain a glossary. One does notice that Dawkins, being British, does make use of the Oxford English Dictionary. But not everyone has easy access to this monument of verbiage. Also, it would seem to me that a dictionary specific to science is often more appropriate. Scientists, when thinking rigorously, use some words differently, e.g., "fact" and "theory" which zoologists as Dawkins and other natural historians have generally not yet fully accepted.

I have noticed, however, in Dawkins' later work that, unlike many Evolutionists, Dawkins does recognize the difficulty regards "homology" and its various definitions. In this current book under review, "homology" is not much, if at all, apparent. Dawkins realizes that one can't use homologies to demonstrate common descent if common descent is automatically implied as part of the definition itself. The notion that "sameness" (i.e., Darwin's morphological "homology") of morphologies or genomes can only be originated by common ancestry is an idea that has never been demonstrated but what Evolutionists must do. It's unfortunate that Dawkins' contemporaries have muddled the definition of "homology" and thus made it but another candidate for the "dumpster of words of words redefined by Evolutionists so as to become all but useless."

In the view of Naturalistic Parallelism which this reviewer subscribes to, it is apparent early on where Dawkins does join with his fellow Evolutionists and thus begins also to go wrong. A primary assumption of Evolutionists is that the origins of life, especially of the genetic code, was so difficult that it could have occurred but once. Dawkins thus writes (p.7):

"We can be very sure there really is a single concestor [Dawkins' term for "common ancestor"] of all surviving life forms on this planet. The evidence is that all that have ever been examined share (exactly in most cases, almost exactly in the rest) the same genetic code; and the genetic code is too detailed, in arbitrary aspects of its complexity, to have been invented twice [....]. As things stand, it appears that all known life forms can be traced to a single ancestor which lived more than 3 billion years ago. If there were other, independent origins of life, they have left no descendants that we have discovered [....]"

I disagree with this fundamental assumption of Evolutionists. Evolutionists themselves often disagree regards a singularity of origins and suggest, as Darwin did at first, that there may have been several initial progenitors. But such allowance of more than one progenitor refutes their own arguments regards sameness as supposedly demonstrating common ancestry. Thus Dawkins, it would seem, has no choice but to choose a singularity of origins. But then, Dawkins may have partially recanted on this in his final chapter where he writes (p.560):

"Darwin probably (and in my view rightly) saw the origin of primitive life as a relatively (and I stress relatively) easy problem compared with the one he solved: how life, once begun, developed its amazing diversity, complexity and powerful illusion of good design."

Its unfortunate that Dawkins doesn't see that the "amazing diversity, complexity and powerful illusion of good design" were undoubtedly mostly there globally, from the beginning, having originated in the fundamental laws of nature and the complexities of the already existing material world. I thus disagree with the fundamental assumption of Dawkins and of Evolutionists in regards to the necessity of all continuing life emanating from a single concestor. A fundamental assumption of Naturalistic Parallelism is rather that the origination of cellular organic material and of DNA / RNA was not singular but rather global. Life and genetic codes originated gazillions (i.e., magnitudes exceeding zillions --- a very large number) of times with zillions of corresponding parallel developments over the eons. I believe that this is what fossil carbon tracings of 3.8 billion years ago demonstrate. This evidence of global biogenesis was noted by Elso Barghoorn and others as far back as the 1970s. Obviously, Natural Selection was a factor early on, even preceding life itself.

While Dawkins is wrong from the start in choosing false assumptions (and an incredibly bad understanding of scientific "fact"), Dawkins nevertheless presents some of the data of Earth's history in an otherwise magnificent and interesting manner. Dawkins hypothetical journey begins with humans as his "Rendezvous 0: All Humankind." He presents his case for the hypothesized 40 rendezvous in total, ending with "Rendezvous 39: Eubacteria." Along the way, Dawkins presents a great deal of interesting information in a quite adept manner: a description of rooted and unrooted family trees and cladistics; other information, pro and con, regards the methodologies used by systemists; the difficulties and challenges of DNA systematics; the ecology of the various time periods; the dinosaur extinctions that occurred about 65 m.y.a. at the KT boundary and the speculations regards the causes; and numerous other informative discussions. As the book is the story of Evolution, it is of course the story of alleged genetic relationships of all organic beings throughout time. In this regards, Dawkins clearly elucidates and incorporates the work of Yale statistician, Joseph Chang, author of "Recent Common Ancestors of All Present Day Individuals" (which leads ultimately to Dawkins' "Rendezvous 0"). Similarly, Dawkins discusses molecular phylogeny. Unfortunately, in both these areas, while Dawkins goes considerably further than most Evolutionists in consideration of underlying assumptions, in the end he is far too accepting of these assumptions and far too lacking of skepticism regards the unknowns in each of these areas that he touches upon. Nevertheless, Dawkins is an unparalleled master of information and, using the organization structure imposed by Evolution --- false and not reflective of reality and the universality of universal laws though such structure may be --- Dawkins is adept at communicating in an interesting manner. His use of 40 rendezvous points representing hypothesized common ancestors is a marvelous means of communicating natural history within the advocacy of his belief structure, Evolution.

Regards this last point, it's been over 150 years since Darwin and no common ancestor has yet been identified in the fossil record. Only intermediaries --- and one artificial genetic reconstruction that I am aware of, Urbilateria (as discussed by Sean B. Carroll; also mentioned by Dawkins) --- are even alleged. One might ask, Who needs Santa Claus, the Great Pumpkin of Halloween, or supernaturalistic entities to believe in when one can have the fun of the fairy tales of large numbers of mythical, unidentified common ancestors?

All but the first and last of the 40 rendezvous points are each represented as a vertical Evolutionary tree running down the side of a page and converging, on the journey back in time, to the relevant hypothesized concestor (i.e., common ancestor) near the page bottom. "Rendezvous 0, All Humankind," while indicating a supposed "Concestor 0" for humans, also interestingly presents many additional roots back in unrooted trees. This is consistent with Evolutionists' notion of species. I.e., in Evolution theory (and also NP) there is no distinct transition from what we artificially define as the species Homo sapiens and some other example of Homo sapiens' predecessors. Rather, whatever their nature, transitions are continuous. Thus, there is in Evolution theory a supposed human common ancestor that allegedly lived about 30 thousand years ago, what Dawkins labels "Concestor 0" of all modern day humans as per the statistical work of Chang et. al. Then, proceeding further back in time toward "Rendezvous 1, Chimpanzees", about six million years ago we are led to "Concestor 1", the hypothesized common ancestor between what we consider to be modern humans and chimps. "Concestor 2" is the hypothesized rendezvous with gorrillas; "Concestor 3" is the hypothesized rendezvous with orangutans; etc. "Rendezvous 39, Eubacteria", like Rendezvous 0 is represented differently and, in this case, as a star diagram. This last rendezvous represents a commingling of microbes. (In NP theory, such representation would be much more global and not dependent upon singularities of origins.)

What Dawkins probably doesn't realize nor intend is that, with such a graphic presentation as depicted for Rendezvous 1 to 38, he comes very close to making the case for Parallelism as the better theory. That is, if one were to replace the bottom portion of each chart and instead leave the supposed ancestry lines leading back separately, i.e., as an unrooted tree, then one has removed a great deal of hypothesization thereby presenting the more parsimonious solution. That is, as one looks at any one of the trees with a vertical length representing tens or hundreds of millions of years of history, one is readily able to visualize how much of the tree represents actual known reality and how much is hypothetical. Conclusive reality can only be represented by two categories: the extant beings (including their history known through human writings, archaeological findings, and other scientific inferences) that are represented by a very tiny portion of the top of one of Dawkins' typical charts and, secondly, by fossils, archaeological relics, radiometric dating and other scientific inferences. Contrary to Dawkins' apparent epistemology, "inferences" are not a priori "facts". All representations of convergences of the fossil data to common ancestors are entirely hypothetical, not indicated or necessary, and thus not scientifically parsimonious. Without such speculation, the data is more scientifically represented with vertical parallel lines. "Rendezvous 39: Eubacteria," the final rendezvous is better represented by a global web of life as based on the work of Carl R. Woese and others rather than by singularities. That is, "Rendezvous 39: Zillions of Global Eubacteria" would seem to be a more appropriate title. It is here, early on, that the origination hox genes, DPMs (dynamic patterning modules of Stuart Newman) may have begun. Under this scenario, symbiosis is, or soon will be, a global phenomena. Etc.

The charts that Dawkins has provided would seem to make the distinction between the proverbial "Intermediaries" and "Common Ancestors" quite clear. Intermediaries, one would think, would be restricted to particular fossils that are alleged to correspond to lineages and the long parallel lines proceeding down the page. Only at a single point at the bottom of each chart is a supposed concestor (i.e., common ancestor) explicitly speculated. But even Dawkins and Darwin aren't above providing some confusion regards intermediaries and common ancestors. While Dawkins generally seemed to distinguish between intermediaries and common ancestors, in this passage from "The Salamander's Tale" the distinction has been blurred (p.303):

"Many of our legal and ethical principles depend on the separation between Homo sapiens and other species. [.....M]any are unthinking meat-eaters, and have no worries about chimpanzees being imprisoned in zoos and sacrificed in laboratories. Would they think again, if we could lay out a living continuum of intermediates between ourselves and chimpanzees, linked in an unbroken chain of interbreeders like the Californian salamanders? Surely they would. Yet it is the merest accident that the intermediates all happen to be dead. It is only because of this accident that we can comfortably and easily imagine a huge gulf between our two species --- or between any two species, for that matter."

The reference is to an extant ring-species of salamanders consisting of several extant subspecies of salamanders. One wonders, in this analogy, is Dawkins suggesting that chimpanzees and humans are ancestral to each other? That is, does he think it would be informative to extend his salamander analogy and similarly consider man and chimp as each being a subspecies of a species? This species might, perhaps, be labeled "chimp-people". Thus, just as we all know that a salamander is a salamander, we would also consider a chimp-person to be a chimp-person. (Now, now --- Don't be pedantic. Dawkins has a chapter titled, essentialistically, "Ape-Man". If Dawkins can teach Creationists that one of our ancestors, apparently a non-specified concestor between his Concestor 3 and Concestor 4, is an archetypical Ape-Man, then surely this reader might use a more politically correct archetypical "Chimp-Person" in lieu of Dawkins' "Concestor 1".) But one also realizes that Dawkins knows better and that the salamander's tale was just one of those interesting stories Dawkins needed to tell. (On the other hand, in a later work (2009) Dawkins does point out the samenesses of a baby chimp and humans.)

Darwin had some similar thoughts highlighting the possible confusion between supposed intermediaries and supposed common ancestors. In his chapter in ORIGINS OF SPECIES titled "Imperfection of the Geological Record," Darwin wrote (1859; p.293):

"In the first place it should always be borne in mind what sort of intermediate forms must, on my theory, have formerly existed. I have found it difficult, when looking at any two species, to avoid picturing to myself, forms DIRECTLY intermediate between them. But this is a wholly false view; we should always look for forms intermediate between each species and a common but unknown progenitor; and the progenitor will generally have differed in some respects from all its modified descendants."

Perhaps it is excusable that Darwin "found it difficult" but surely if the evidence for intermediaries and ancestors were as certain as modern Evolutionists would have us believe, there ought no longer be any difficulty whatsoever regards the identification of the alleged common ancestor of any two species.

At least it is known, in the Evolutionist's view, alleged intermediates are far more numerous than alleged common ancestors, i.e., Dawkins "Concestors." Of course it could be, in the previous quote by Dawkins, that Dawkins is alleging no differing intermediates between extant chimpanzees and the supposed common ancestor of humans and chimps. That is, it could be that Dawkins is making a speculation regards man and chimp that chimps are the common ancestor of the two. Thus the speculation would be that chimps have remained unchanged for the 6 million years that is speculated to have been the time since divergence. Darwin allowed for such a possibility of what, I suppose, might be considered "living fossil common ancestors" (1859; p.293):

"It is just possible by my theory, that one of two living forms might have descended from the other; for instance, a horse from a tapir; and in this case direct intermediate links will have existed between them. But such a case would imply that one form had remained for a very long period unaltered, whilst its descendants had undergone a vast amount of change; and the principle of competition between organism and organism, between child and parent, will render this a very rare event; for in all cases the new and improved forms of life will tend to supplant the old and unimproved forms."

A tapir is "any of several large, hog-like mammals of tropical America and the Malayan peninsula: tapirs have flexible snouts, feed on plants, and move about at night" (Webster's dictionary). The dictionary also notes tapirs are about three feet high at the shoulder. For our purposes, the important concept is that tapirs are extant contemporaries of modern horses just as chimps are of humans.

Ah, but not so fast. Less we allow the reality of there being no fossil evidence between an alleged human-chimp common ancestor and the modern chimp --- less we allow this reality to accuse Dawkins of not believing that man and chimps do indeed share a common ancestor of some different species rather than a living fossil common ancestor, we have this from Dawkins (p.309):

"Evolution is now universally accepted as a fact by thinking people, so one might have hoped that essentialist [belief in ideal archetypes representing each species] intuitions in biology would have been finally overcome. Alas, this hasn't happened. Essentialism refuses to lie down. In practice, it is usually not a problem. Everyone agrees that Homo sapiens is a different species (and most would say a different genus) from Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee. But everyone also agrees that if you follow human ancestry backward to the shared ancestor and then forward to chimpanzees, the intermediates all along the way will form a gradual continuum in which every generation would have been capable of mating with its parent or child of the opposite sex."

However, we must weigh this quote from Dawkins with two earlier statements by Dawkins that give weight to my suggestion that Evolutionists do indeed believe the essentialistic idea that the chimp is a living fossil common ancestor, or at least might come to that conclusion as based upon the weight of the evidence and lack thereof. In his "Rendezvous 1: Chimpanzees" where all humankind is supposedly joined with chimps, we have this (p.100):

"As we approach Rendezvous 1, then, the chimpanzee pilgrims are approaching the same point from another direction. Unfortunately we don't know anything about that other direction. Although Africa has yielded up some thousands of hominid fossils or fragments of fossils, not a single fossil has ever been found which can definitely be regarded as along the chimpanzee line of descent from Concestor 1."

In other words, the alleged human link to chimps via a (supposed non-archetypical) common ancestor is entirely theory driven and there is no real fossil evidence for such a link. Even more, this lack of evidence continues with the alleged joining of gorillas in the alleged next rendezvous point (p.106):

"Unfortunately there are no fossils to bridge the gap between Concestors 2 and 1, nothing to guide us in deciding whether Concestor 2, which is perhaps our 300,000-great-grand-parent, was more like a gorilla or more like a chimpanzee or, indeed, more like a human. My guess would be chimpanzee, but this is only because the huge gorilla seems more extreme, and less like the generality of apes."

Well, don't despair, dear Evolutionists. Surely by the time we get back to the one hundred millionth great-grand-parent evidence will become more certain. (I am facetious.) In the meantime, it would seem to me that the somewhat more parsimonious, and therefore the somewhat more scientific, hypothesis is that chimps and gorillas are indeed living fossil common ancestors of humans. This hypothesis regards living fossil common ancestors has the advantage of apparently already being accepted by authority figures. The publisher, Gramercy / Random House, of my 1979 reprint of Darwin's ORIGINS OF SPECIES, for example, has placed on the cover the now standard 5-hominid depiction that students all over the world would have no choice but to interpret in any other manner than as implying linear descent of man from ape (as opposed to Darwin's actual hypothesis of common descent). Surely, book editors, publishers, and advertising executives wouldn't lead us astray. (I am being facetious.)

More seriously, one further point needs to be made regards what one ought to expect the fossil record to demonstrate as based upon theory. Where Dawkins' representation of common ancestors as single points may be useful to his organizational scheme, such representation can be misleading. Evolutionists generally believe that it is not individual organisms that evolve. Rather, according to standard belief, it is entire populations that evolve. Speciation, according to ET, occurs when populations separate into two or more populations and thus evolve distinctly. Dawkins mentions this aspect of ET in his "Tale" regards several species of narrowmouth frogs but ignores the implications (p.311):

"As with any two species, there must have been a time when they were one. Something separated them: to use the technical term, the single ancestral species 'speciated' and became two. It is a model for what happens at every branch point in evolution. Every speciation begins with some sort of initial separation between two populations of the same species. It isn't always a geographical separation, but, as we shall see in the Cichlid's Tale, an initial separation of some kind makes it possible for the statistical distribution of genes in the two populations to move apart. This usually results in an evolutionary divergence with respect to something visible: shape or colour or behavior. In the case of these two populations of American frogs, the western species became adapted to life in drier climates than the eastern, but the most conspicuous differences lies in their mating calls."

Everyone recognizes what might be termed inheritable variation. Furthermore, there are no inconsistencies with such differing "species" in terms of the fossil record. Essentially, "a frog is a frog is a frog." The difficulty comes in extending this idea of speciation to, say, Dawkins implied concestor of frogs and salamanders. The fossil record doesn't support many differing varieties of "frogmanders." That is, with ET large numbers of lineages are implied at and after the alleged speciation divergence that aren't accounted for in the fossil record. (I.e., concestors are not hypothesized to be singularities.) Dawkins makes no account of these many lineages; nor does the fossil record. With NP theory there are no "frogmanders" needing to be accounted for but rather only continual transitions from origins of life forward.

Thus, the even more parsimonious hypothesis and hypothesis that is reflective of the fossil record states that there are no common ancestors. Rather, all lineages remain independent. This latter is what a naturalistic, scientific view compels me personally to accept. Naturalistic Parallelism is what the evidence best demonstrates. Parallelism also avoids the essentialism that Dawkins discusses in that modern species can be identified as entities with histories, i.e., their lineages. This history of each modern day organism, beginning with the organism as known by its associated species name, continues back through history to the Cambrian, pre-Cambrian, and on back to the organism's genomic, cellular, biotic, and prebiotic origins --- or at least to the organism's genomic origins which undoubtedly developed in parallel with zillions of other members of the species and gazillions of other organisms of different species. Clearly, phenotypes (but not necessarily genotypes) of today differ from those of eons past.

GLOSSARY NOTE: The distinction regards the understanding of "parallel" and its derivatives as used in NP (Naturalistic Parallelism or just Parallelism) theory --- the distinction needs to be emphasized from the usage of "parallel" in ET (Evolution theory). In the latter, the terms "parallel evolution" and "convergent evolution" assume a certain parallelism (as understood from the secular meaning of "parallel") but only so far as this parallelism (genotypically and phenotypically in the former; phenotypically in the latter) extends, maximally, back to an alleged common ancestor. In NP theory there are no common ancestors. Thus the secular notion of "parallel" extends much further back to the supposed global origins of the genetic code.

REFERENCE NOTES: In my review of Ernst Mayr's THIS IS BIOLOGY,' q.v., I have indicated some references that would be appropriate to this review also. To that list I add here a few more references of note. First, the science reporter, Suzan Mazur, has been a particularly rich source of references regards creative scientific thinkers. See Mazur's website, www-suzanmazur-com and also her book, THE ALTENBERG 16: AN EXPOSE OF THE EVOLUTION INDUSTRY (2009). The book contains excerpts that were taken from the website. Gerd B. Muller headed up the Altenberg project. See the anthology he coedited with Stuart A. Newman, ORIGINATION OF ORGANISMAL FORM: BEYOND THE GENE IN DEVELOPMENTAL AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY (2003). Here, Newman's essay regards DPM (dynamic patterning modules) is particularly fascinating. Another anthology by Roger Milkman is also of interest, PERSPECTIVES ON EVOLUTION (1982). Note that among the 11 essays of this later is one by Stephen Jay Gould that explains the meaning of the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium that Gould and Niles Eldredge developed in the early 1970s. Milkman's own essay, "Toward a Unified Selection Theory" is also of interest as are the other essays. THE NATURAL SELECTION OF THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS (1996) by R.J.P. Williams and J.J.R. Frausto da Silva provide some fascinating insights into pre-biotic possibilities, including likely origination of bacteria flagella.

Note that all of the above authors, as far as I am aware as of this date, continue to hold to the core idea of Evolution, common descent, and rather question Natural Selection theory. It is typical to question whether or not NS when coupled with chance mutations is enough to cause speciation. It is generally recognized that NS isn't causal but rather a result. That is, "selection can only work on what already exists" (Muller). Chance mutations and NS aren't adequate regards originations of phenotypes. Interestingly, similar arguments were well put forward by St. George Mivart long ago in his ON THE GENESIS OF SPECIES ([1871], 2010). While Mivart occasionally subscribes to teleological causation, such views don't get in the way of his otherwise naturalistic perspective. (I suspect a certain amount of teleology is part of the job description for a future Saint.) Mivart presents some marvelous naturalistic arguments that continue to this day. Mivart writes (p.9):

"The special Darwinian hypothesis [....] is beset with certain scientific difficulties, which must by no means be ignored, and some of which, I venture to think, are absolutely insuperable. What Darwinism or 'Natural Selection' is, will be shortly explained; but before doing so, I think it well to state the object of this book, and the view taken up and defended in it. It is its object to maintain the position that 'Natural Selection' acts, and indeed must act, but that still, in order that we may be able to account for the production of known kinds of animals and plants, it requires to be supplemented by the action of some other natural law or laws as yet undiscovered."

I certainly agree. Furthermore, two additional marvelous works are advanced by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Muller that similarly enlighten us regards questions of today that were also discussed long ago. Julian Huxley's EVOLUTION: THE MODERN SYNTHESIS was first published in 1942 and has a 2010 Forward by Pigliucci and Muller. While I will always hold a diminished view of Huxley elsewhere initiating the equating of scientific "theory" (i.e., heliocentricism, of gravity, Evolution, etc.) with "fact", I do find his writing in this book marvelously inspirational. A companion volume, EVOLUTION: THE EXTENDED SYNTHESIS (2010), is an anthology edited by Pigliucci and Muller that contains 17 essays by twenty different modern thinkers. While all these authors are looking for concepts beyond natural selection as causal agents, NP theory understands that even with additional causal factors, speciation does not result. Speciation has already occurred parallely as a result of global biogenesis and the later originations of the full genetic codes.

Finally, don't dismiss out-of-hand Louis Agassiz's ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION ([1857], 2004). Ignoring Agassiz's Creationist tendencies, as was typical of the era, one might nevertheless find numerous naturalistic and plausable alternatives to Darwin's arguments such as regards geographical distributions, samenesses between organisms, and so forth. Agassiz's call for standards in science is also laudable and brings to mind, especially in regards to definitions, the possible usefullness of hierarchies (coupled with a "dumpster" of words that have become too confused to be of continued use).

Richard Dawkins has a wonderful writing style, and his name on a book is a guarantee of a witty, erudite, and lucid exposition on evolution and how it works. In this book he needs all of this literary artillery, not because he is arguing any contentious issues-in fact he's probably preaching to the choir for most readers-but because the work is lengthy, covers a wide range of topics, and does so in considerable detail.

The clever format of the work is a Chauceresque "pilgrimage" to the ancestor of all life, hence the title. Just as individuals join Chaucer's tale of Canterbury and entertain us with their personal tales, so too do the various life forms who join our trip back into time. The author picks certain species to clarify what new is introduced to the complexity of life ways at each bifurcation on the genetic tree. Throughout, he makes it very evident that this is not a tale of organisms but of the genes they contain, and he does a superb job of it. The reader is never allowed to forget what the point of the migration is.

I found some of Professor Dawkins' points particularly illuminating because he made things I thought I understood even clearer still. I also found the author's capacity to arrange such a massive amount of information in such a logical order, weaving in important details at key points, amazing to me. Although I know quite a lot of the information, I doubt I could have arranged it in anywhere near such a comprehensible order as the author has.

The problem with the work is that it is almost too detailed for the average reader-and this despite the fact that the author does not get drawn into discussing material he has covered in earlier works. With frequent references to his own titles and to those of others on specific topics, he manages to keep to his specified goal. Still, the work is a lengthy 614 pages, and it covers a lot of territory. It is almost encyclopedic. I have to admit, though, that should a beginner make an attempt to get through it, he/she would have a very clear and comprehensive understanding of the workings of evolution. For those with only a casual interest, this is probably more than you want to tackle. I am a fairly fast and persistent reader, and I had difficulty staying on track. I read the book in small increments, sometimes stopping in the middle of chapters. It required time to digest the new material or the new way of looking at old material.

One aspect of the book from which both the enthusiast and the casual reader will benefit, is the extensive bibliography. The books listed under "further reading" are current and diverse. Those from the general bibliography include both periodicals and books on specific topics. Some are a little dated, but all give a comprehensive coverage of discussions in evolutionary biology from which the reader may select follow-up information that more suits their level of and specific interests. All appear to be in English. Some of the journals may be difficult to find in public libraries, but all should be available in a large university library. Of those that I've read, Mark Ridley's Red Queen (1993) on the development of complex life forms and the enigma of sex and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (1991) on the serendipitous environmental factors affecting human diversity are my favorites. Although on cosmology rather than evolution, Sir Martin Rees' book, Just Six Numbers (1999), is also of interest.

For those not afraid of detail, I hardily recommend the book. For those who just want a basic understanding, I'd look for something a little simpler.

The scientific material Dawkins covers is interesting and quite well presented. As a scientist, he writes surprisingly well; he is certainly very readable. I question, however, if using Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as a format was necessary or helpful. By eliminating that artificial scheme, he probably could have included many more fascinating and poorly known (to the lay reader) stories. The inclusion of several almost vituperative political rantings causes me to rate this book lower than it otherwise deserves. Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with his views (and I admit I do not) a book popularizing science is no place for them. It is surprising that his editor or publisher did not insist on its deletion.

I have some reservations, but I moderately enjoyed this book. I guess not every scientist can write like Steve Pinker or Brian Greene. I found that Dawkins wandered much too often into areas beyound his area of expertise, usually to interject his left wing politics. I think scientists are best when they talk about science and leave the politics to the politicians. To claim that President Kennedy was intelligent and President Bush is dumb, is his opinion, not science.

-Frank

Dawkins spends a lot of time talking about how the book is organized, as if he's writing his thoughts down as they come to him. And this is especially annoying since the "Canterbury Tales" analogy simply doesn't work. Also, he spends a great deal of time on nomenclature instead of more interesting scientific facts, and alludes to things he's not telling us because they're in his other books, assuming we've read everything he's ever written. This is not the grand overview of evolution it appears to be. In fact, I'm not sure why it was written.

The Corridor through Time
Tohon

Prologue
I am a Bangladeshi born of a Muslim family. My ancestors were Hindus and, somehow, I inherited their philosophical instincts. Although professionally I am an engineer with advanced degrees from the U.S.A. and remain a practicing Moslem, at some point in life, I was drawn in to the Indian philosophy and devoted a significant part of my adult life studying Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. It was a part of my being—a way of discovering to my roots.
In the process, being an introvert, I spent years seeking to comprehend the profundity of life through introspection. At the end I come to realise that the key to life is memory and it is to the point that there would be no existence without memory (The Landscape of a Mind by Tohon, New Generation Publishing, London, 2015).
If my perception is true then the single most important building block of life must be memory. Like a thread in a fabric, memory is one continuous chain from the beginning of life to the present that extends in the future. It is like a river that originates from the mountain, meanders through the plains and eventually merges in an ocean. If a water molecule had memory it could have remembered its entire journey—from the mountain top to the ocean. So, the question arose: Would a living species be able to recount its journey?
The answer lay in Richard Dawkins’ books: The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1989 and The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, Phoenix, 2005, in particular. It was a burst of blinding light that made me realise that a living body does carry its past legacy through genetic inheritance.
‘The Corridor through Time’ is the story of a journey that explores life’s distant past, not by scientific investigation, but by innate remembrance.
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After a long journey to a remote island, Professor Jonathan Price, an eminent evolutionary biologist, returns home with a few curious, fossilized relics. One of them is an uncommon egg-shaped seed.
He buries himself in his laboratory to assess the mysterious item. After months of painstaking examinations, he finally gains sufficient insight not only into the origin and nature of the seed, but also into the fully-grown plant that the seed embodies.
In his scientific report, Professor Price details the plant’s conceptual height and breadth; the shape, colour and fragrance of its branches, leaves and flowers; the size of the protective spikes; and even the colour, smell and taste of its ripened fruits. Based on the concept that any seed is linked to life’s first creation by an unbroken chain of inheritance, he explains the evolutionary aspects as to how this unusual plant with an unusual seed may have evolved over time.

It is fascinating to consider that the seed story applies to all species, including humans. I am now sixty-five, but truly I am much older than that—as old as the first appearance or creation of life. A seed is the beginning of a plant’s life, but the seed itself is linked to life’s first creation by an unbroken chain of inheritance. Likewise, an embryo in its mother’s womb is not the beginning of a new life—it is the new beginning of an ancient life (The Jihadi by Tohon, New Generation Publishing, London, 2015).
Therefore, the question arises: Like a seed, does a man (and, for that matter, all other species) carry past information? Evolutionary biology suggests that all lives store a vast amount of information assembled over time. It is just that one may not be aware of it, let alone having any clue how to unlock it. But, interestingly enough, the memory unlocks itself during life’s birth and growth. The only thing is that we humans, mistakenly, refer to it as enquiry, learning, knowledge and creativity. In the Socratic view, it is nothing but recollection.
As narrated in Plato’s Meno, Socrates believes that all knowledge that has ever been known and will ever be known is already pre-existent in human memory. In that sense there is no such thing as human creativity. How valid is it for a mango tree to claim that the sweetest of all the fruits that it bears is its own creation?

Biologically, Richard Dawkins notes in The Ancestor’s Tale, “Humans as a species, as well as humans as individuals, are temporary vessels containing a mix of genes from different sources. Individuals are temporary meeting points on the crisscrossing routes that genes take through history.” Therefore, like nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms and ripening flowers into fruitfulness, intrinsically, a man’s actions and reactions, plans and aspirations, thoughts and perceptions, and knowledge and wisdom must originate from a primordial life and are carried through generations by genetic inheritance. Every life is an embodiment of its past legacies influenced by the environment and circumstances that surrounds it.

One may disagree with this inference, just as men often disagree with each other on many other matters—religious beliefs, in particular. Maybe the genetically stored information varies from man to man as memories get mixed up, buried, eroded or even lie in a dormant state. And, then, the process of recollection is complex, and its outcome is not necessarily unique. Above all, like rivers, even though all lives descend from a common origin, they end up tracking diverse paths, following a different journey, and landing worlds apart. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in one person being a believer where another is an atheist; or, there is nothing wrong believing in “creation” as opposed to “evolution.”
However, the real challenge, like that of the fictional Professor Price, is that if one could crack the code imprinted on life’s fundamental building blocks, one would gain insight not only into the diversity among species but also into their intricate forms and features, attributes and skills, characters and behavior, and, above all, one would know the deeply coded knowledge that surfaces with the passage of time. Or, if a man could unlock his own memory and delve deep down into the past and ultimately to life’s foundation, he could trace his lineage back to the origin.
Cracking life’s code may be difficult, but not entirely impossible. There are simple means to get around solving such a complex problem. One of the ways to unlock one’s own memory may work like this: When one sees something old—say, one’s childhood photo in the family album—or hears something long forgotten—say, an old song on the Grandpa’s record player—does it not evoke deep emotion? Does it not bring a flash flood of buried, childhood memories of joy or even of sorrow? In a similar manner, if a man could recollect his own life-events as far back as his memory goes and go through all his reactions and deeds, passions and fears, loves and hates and track the moments that evoke profound sentiments, emotions and innate recognition would it not reconnect him to his long-forgotten past? Would it not trigger innate remembrance of the events on the ‘crisscrossing routes that genes take through history’?
Like sonic signals that geoscientists record to discover deeply buried, past geologic events, on my recollection I have been able to detect the subtlest tremors in the innermost recesses of my mind and have been able to trace back some of my past legacy (The Jihadi by Tohon, New Generation Publishing, London, 2015).
I remember that I lived as a mother; a cleaner; a poor, starving man; a sufi, saint, or Yudhisthir; a thief; and as a violent man. I even remember my days in a solitary confinement. And that makes me appreciate the freedom I enjoy in this life.
My remembrance also takes me to the days when I lived as a cold-blooded reptile; a plant—maybe a banyan tree, a dandelion or a desert-dwelling cactus; and, more importantly, as a tree-dweller. My days of piggyback rides, climbing trees and swinging through the branches continue to thrill me after all this time.
I also treasure my days in the shallow, cool waters of an inundated grassland. The soft breeze creating endless ripples on the vast expanse of water brought me boundless joy that, even today, resonates in the depths of my heart. But the episode that made the deepest impression on me is the time I dwelt in a remote, arid, rocky mountains. Even after all these times the mesmerizing beauty of the dry, rugged, desolate, rocky hills continue to possess me, hold me in a hypnotic spell and, like a lonesome mother, keep calling me back home.
As I continue to trek the corridor through time, I begin to realize that it is nothing but a journey of a homecoming.
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Tohon is the author of The Jihadi (Revised Edition 2016) and The Landscape of a Mind (Revised Edition 2015), New Generation Publishing, London.

Wonderful, amazing, dazzling, majestic! There aren't enough adjectives to describe the breathtaking narrative scope of this book. This is the astonishing dramatic saga of our evolutionary past. It's a rip-roaring, real-life adventure story, told in reverse chronological order, full of fascinating characters and wondrous facts of nature. This evidence-based story is far more awe-inspiring than any fairy-tale or folk version or our origins.

I had been given The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design by me atheist father many years ago, back when I was still a creationist. I enjoyed that read, although I wasn't convinced back then that evolution was true (at least on the "macro" level).

So much I didn't understand.

Flash forward a dozen plus years and I've converted out of faith, now an atheist, in part thanks to The God Delusion and other good books, and a lot of internal introspection.

So I'm starting to read stuff I might have ignored in the past because the idea of learning about something I didn't believe in didn't appeal to me.

Narrow minded? Yes, but that's Christianity for you, self focused and self deluded.

So, this book, wow, I learned a lot of stuff about how the small incremental changes work, how my old thinking of "a species can't change to another species" was more of a non-sequitur than anything else, evolution doesn't work like that anyway, so I was disbelieving something that wasn't even what was being expressed as to how the theory worked out in the first place.

I was intrigued by this book and read the whole thing, quite a feat, it's a long book. I'll admit some places were slow and perhaps for the lay person, it could have been shorter, but never the less, I do recommend it to anyone that is interested in how evolution works and who are ancestors actually were (not monkeys). I appreciated his explaining how dating works (in different levels and methods, eye opening to me).

I plan on moving on to some more of Dawkin's works, I think it's liberating to realize how life on this planet evolved and to discard old myths and legends. I believe it's made me a better person.

A tour de force by Professor Richard Dawkins, taking us on a delightful and truly amazing trip up to billions of years ago to meet our ancestors.

This book, not always an easy read for those who like me are not directly involved in some way with biology, leaves no doubt about the veracity of evolution and the force of natural selection in the shaping of life on earth. In this incredible journey backwards, Professor Dawkins clearly pursues, unlike the creationist mind, not his truth based upon personal belief but the truth based upon the abundant known facts available to science today, therefore never forgetting to point out other possibilities and different points of view with a wide range of new rearrangements to be disclosed in the future.

In his own words, "my objection to supernatural beliefs is that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world." And this is exactly one of the main aims of this book, to excite the human mind and curiosity with the wonders of the real world, making us simultaneously more humble and better human beings.

This is an absolutely wonderful book: witty, beautiful English, stimulating, exciting, in the manner of very few (Dawkins, Gould, Wilson, ...). It is not the most original or best from Dawkins; the most original is "The Selfish Gene" and the best is "The Extended Phenotype". But for the sheer joy of reading about placing humans in the tree, of learning of our ancestors, as well as of learning of other key science, e.g. C-14 dating, this is a most exhilarating and wonderful book, an absolute favorite of mine.
However, I give it a three, for what many would call a trivial or logistic reason; namely, there is no digital version. Skip the discussion of eBook versus printed page. For me, the issue is simple: eBooks can be read on an iPhone or iPad (or similar ...) far more easily for many of us who are partially "visually impaired", e.g. macular degeneration, than printed books. Perhaps this is a small point, but it is enough for someone such as me to give the book a three.

Great book but too much emphasis on human origins. Would love to see one on bird or turtle origins. Too much attributed to gene control I mean Beaver Dam building? He cites a cruel experiment where a beaver neurotically cuts down trees and builds invisible dams in a cement pool. He claims genetic imprint, I say the poor animal had a breakdown. Animals learn and pass on information.
Disappointed no mention of turtles, pterosaurs or offbeat animals which would be more interesting than apes and fungi. Those criticisms aside the book is very thorough and he is an amazing visionary. I disagree with him on a few points (the sole purpose to live is not to reproduce) but hey I'm not a scientist.
He should write a book on oddball animal evolution history.

Reading this book is so difficult and so hard going that I put it down after 2 chapters and filed it in the section of my library that gathers dust. I understand what he is trying to say but he says it in a very dry and uninteresting way. I have read some of his other books that are most interesting but this one just doesn't work for me.

I read this prodigious book when it was first published and found in it exactly what had been missing from the science shelves since I myself became a science writer: the full data set on which to finally construct the ancestor pilgrimage of our own lineage within the larger Epic of Evolution, aka Big History. (Note: This is Connie Barlow writing, partner of Michael Dowd.) Unlike his authorship of other books, Dawkins did not research this one by himself; it took a crew of graduate students, as Dawkins describes in the acknowledgments.

Had I been just a casual reader of this book, I would have rated it only a 3-star or 4-star (while rating all his other books, so deliciously and succinctly written, consistent 5s). But Ancestor's Tale empowered me to finally produce an interactive educational program for children and to spend a half dozen years testing it out and improving it. Yes, as of 2011, Dawkins finally wrote a children's book (The Magic of Reality). But I experience his Ancestor's Tale as by far his greatest contribution toward bringing our evolutionary heritage alive for children -- though not, of course, directly. (If curious, you can watch how I do this in the classroom by googling Ancestor's Tale for Kids.)

"The Ancestor's Tale," Richard Dawkins's engaging look into the reverse-chronology of evolution, is based upon Chaucer's "Cantebury Tales;" we get various chapters revolving around certain organisms (or, rather, the earliest common ancestor of the modern-day organism), most chapters featuring a "tale" that deals with some aspect of evolution.

"Tale" is not perfect, though it is helped out by the fact that Dawkins readily admits his book isn't perfect. If he's uncertain of who came first in his backward trek through time, he admits it. If there is something scientists are still unsure of, Dawkins doesn't throw an answer our way--he describes to us the problem, and how future scientists might unravel it. There are a few other flaws, however, inherent in his writing: he is often wordy (especially in the sections co-written with Yan Wong, some of which Dawkins even tells the casual reader to just skip), and his various invented phrases ("concestor" being the prominent one) become hard to follow. Then there is his needless political skewering; he goes off-topic frequently to talk about the (mainly American) political climate of today's world. He also makes his opinions about Creationists plain; he often goes out of his way to mock them, to the extent of deterring the reader (most of whom, we must assume, believe in evolution) from his points.

His snide remarks (and occasional wordiness) aside, Dawkins's "The Ancestor's Tale" is an enjoyable, thoroughly informative romp through evolution. It is an admitably-biased approach (evolution through a human perspective; it could just as easily have been told through that of an elephant, which even Dawkins admits would be interesting), but that is unavoidable; humans can only tell human stories. Taken as such, "The Ancestor's Tale" is a must-read for anyone with an interest in evolution, or scientific writing in general. It may be a bit more than the most casual reader can handle, but if you've done some general-science reading before (I'm not expert, believe me; hell, I'm an English major!), you are more than prepared. Strap yourselves in for a journey back to the beginning of life...you'll find quite a few surprises along the way, I guarantee you.

What an adventure backwards in time to find the last common ground before evolutionary separation of creatures who come to be different species.. Then the process is repeated over and over as we pilgrimmage back again and again.

I understand some of the legitimate complaints here about slow going early on in the book. I dropped it the first time I started, but I read such good reviews and I had enjoyed other Dawkins works, so I tried it again. I was well rewarded the second time I readit. The best presentation of evolution I have ever read.

The nay sayers here are not reviewing the book, but rather evolution. The book, the data and the reasoning make a magnificent inside story of Evolution by Natural Selection.

The Ancestor's Tale may well be Dawkins most accomplished achievement on evolutionary biology although maybe not his most readable general science book. What he has done is to start with modern humans and to follow a phylogeny (the evolutionary tree) through geological time to the RNA world (precursors to DNA) covering the most important ancestors (called concestors) along with intermixed fascinating factual anecdotes. For all intents and purposes this is the evolution walkthrough that many have demanded but unlike his other works this is far more powered by scientific technical details and less witty than his challenges to supernatural magical thinking although he does try to break the mechanical procedure of his enormous endeavour with interludes of intriguing biological buzz stories.

There are not many biologists who would have undertaken such a task but there is a demand for it and as Dawkins so aptly puts it, this one is a real pilgrimage. He covers Cro-Magnon, humankind, Archaic homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Ergasts, Habilines, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orang utans, gibbons, old world monkeys, new world monkeys, howler monkeys, tarsiers, lemurs, bushbabies, aye-aye, the cretaceous catastrophe, colugos, tree shrews, rodents, rabbits, mice, beavers, laurasiatheres, hippos, seals, xenarhrans, armadillo's, afrotheres, marsupials, moles, monotremes, duckbills, star-nosed moles, duckbilled platypus, mammal-like reptiles, sauropsids, Galapagos finch, peacocks, dodos, elephant birds, amphibians, salamanders, narrowmouths, axolotls, lungfish, coelacanth, ray-finned fish, leafy sea dragons, pike, mudskipper, cichlid, blind cave fish, flounders, sharks, lampreys, hagfish, lancelets, sea squirts, ambulacrarians, protostomes, ragworms, brine shrimp, leaf cutters, grasshoppers, fruit fies, rotifers, brancacles, velvet worms, acoelomorph flatworms, cnidarians, jellyfish, polypifers, ctenophores, placezoans, spongers, choanoflagellates, drips, fungi, amoebozoans, plants, cauliflowers, redwoods, mixotrich, archaea, eubacteria, rhizobiums, taqs and the RNA world. Now he covers the evolution of each of these, not that these modern organisms are what we evolved from (a silly creationist idea propagated because they can't deal with the actual case for evolution). We share a common ancestor with each of them and this book is all about those rendezvous points.

The bulk of evolutionary data is truly overwhelming although quite often the science can get merciless for the uninitiated. For this reason The Ancestor's Tale is for the advanced Dawkins reader (or those with some experience with evolution literature; if not try his `The Blind Watchmaker' or `The Selfish Gene' first) and is surprisingly light on anti-creationism/anti-religion but is double weighty on science and in the end it's a torrent of challenges to fundamentalism busting through and through with non-stop facts upon facts (650+ pages of them) supporting evolution. Again Dawkins has created one of the most conscious raising experiences you can get from any book about this topic.

To top it off the book has no less than four color sections with dozens of plates and this doesn't even include the illustrations that adorn every other couple of pages or so. There are few paperbacks on the shelves that are remotely as well put together as this volume. The Ancestor's Tale is a stupendous tome that sets a benchmark in evolution writings. Prepare to put the work in (you may have to make several attempts at it over a long period of time) but in the end it is worth it. This is history in the making in more ways than one.

In this tour de force, R. Dawkins brushes not less than the evolution of the tree of man from `the vanity of the present' to the origin of life on earth, thereby showing that `all living creations are cousins'.
It is an itinerary heavily marked by nearly extinctions, drifting continents, geographical barriers, population migrations and climate changes. Darwinian natural selection molded new species, which were more apt to survive in all those different circumstances. Individual living beings, however, were not more than `temporary meeting points on the crisscrossing routes that genes take through history'.
For the author, the origin of life is the origin of heredity, from where `every gene has its own tree'. Overall, `biological evolution has no privileged line of descent and no designated end.'

During his tale, R. Dawkins explains clearly (!) the true nature and the role of, among others, genes, chromosomes, (mitochondrial) DNA, eu- and prokaryote cells, chemical reactions, as well as other important or strange phenomena like the `primitive soup' of the universe, the speed of and the next possible step in the Darwinian evolution, embryonic diversification, the bdelloid sex scandal, the (advantages) of sexual selection, bipedalism, brain size, radioactive clocks and much much more.
Contrary to S.J. Gould, he sees some kind of `progress' during the evolutionary processes.
He gives also outspoken and sharp comments, e.g., on abortion, on race-racism-positive discrimination and on creationists desperately looking for gaps.

This book with beautiful graphic material and an excellent bibliography is the work of a superb free mind. It is a must read for all those interested in the history of life on earth.

This is an eminently readable, highly informative work of popular science for lay readers. I'd liken it to a Guns Germs & Steel in terms of how much memorable information is packed into a book that's enjoyable enough to be beach/aeroplane reading. Dawkins has a rare gift for taking evolutionary biology and other science and making it engaging and accessible to anyone. It's also worth noting that this isn't a polemic on atheism. so a theistic reader should find nothing objectionable here.

While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my "liberal Christian rants," let me say this: It's a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible's creation story (anything but a literal interpretation!) before it alienates the coming generation, who will simply know better.

This book will help. I'm not a fan of Dawkins' anti-religion tirades, but when he sticks to his evolutionary biology, his writing is a pure delight. It's insightful, highly intelligent, and witty. The subtitle of the book is A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, and it's a long journey backward in time from present-day humans to the beginnings of life four million years ago.

You'll meet Cro-Magnon man, the Neanderthals, chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, rodents and rabbits, reptiles, sharks, flatworms, sponges, fungi, plants, and far more, each with their own unique role and story to tell.

Scientific understanding is, and ever will be, in a state of transition. As we learn, we shape our theories to fit the facts. It's an exploration that never ends, an exciting quest for truth that Dawkins excels in sharing. He stops often along this journey back in time to introduce interesting life forms and their evolutionary sidebars, evoking wonder and appreciation for the real creation story that far exceeds any ancient tales. It's such a treat that I'm almost envious of long-time creationists who can, by opening their minds and turning the cover of this book, open themselves up to a new world of wonder.

You will see the world in a different way after reading this.

Richard Dawkins has been the chief champion of Natural Selection for years. His debates with other evolutionary thinkers, such as Stephen J. Gould, are the stuff of legends. In this book he truly puts all of this best thinking about Natural Selection in one place and makes it accessible for everyone, but for an evolutionary biologist such as me, he also brings in the very latest thinking and information. All in all this is a tour de force of the highest intellectual and literary caliber. There was much in this book which was new to me and I pride myself on at least keeping up with the big advances in evolutionary biology. Dawkins' scholarship really astounds me!

Dawkins takes the approach of starting with Homo sapiens and working his way back to the primordial ooze from which we arose. The trip is a delight in all aspects. Along the way he pokes holes in creationists in all their various guises (the most recent of which are the advocates of so-called `intelligent design'). But he also questions other evolutionary biologists both in general interpretation of Natural Selection and in specifics.

It is a shame in more ways than one that Stephen Gould died before this book came out. It would have been wonderful to read his reaction to Dawkins' big synopsis. Dawkins was often critical of Gould, but the two carried the banner of clear thinking about Natural Selection as a team for many years.

I highly recommend this book for professionals and lay people who are interested in Natural Selection. This book is not for those looking for `loop holes' in Natural Selection: Dawkins once again shows that Natural Selection is as close to `fact' as we come in the biological sciences.

I had not read any Dawkins since The Selfish Gene many years ago, and I had forgotten what a wonderful writer he is. This book is a genuine page-turner. The man should write a novel! Anyone who has fallen for the nonsense of Creationism - or that modern incarnation called Intelligent Design - should read this book. The only negative comment I would make is that I wish he would stop making negative asides about religion. Darwin didn't stoop to this because he knew that his idea itself was delivering a vicious blow to religion. He didn't belabour the point because, first, he did not want to cause offence, and, second, he knew that his idea was so powerful and so obviously right that nothing would stand against it. No doubt Dawkins would say that Creationism is now strong in the US and it is essential to rubbish it using every possible tactic. I disagree. The best way to fight such a silly idea is to keep writing intelligent, thought-provoking books like this - without the gratuitous sniping at religion. By resorting to this he makes himself look desperate, when Darwin was magisterial.

Written in a lively fashion, Dawkins cleverly takes a reverse tack on presenting the story of evolution by going backwards in time, starting with humans and stopping at each "concestor" branch point, the first being the common ancestor of chimps and humans. The "tales" are not really stories about the individual concestors, but rather short essays on various aspects of evolutionary theory sometimes only rather tangentially related to the animal in question. For example, the "Lamprey's Tale" uses the type of hemoglobin found in lampreys to illustrate the idea of "taking the gene's perspective" (versus the organism's perspective)in evolution. But they are all well done, often with clever "morals," and very informative. Dawkins gives very short shrift to Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory, I think rather unfairly so, calling it "overrated." Certainly, for example, an alternative "Coelocanth's tale" would have been a perfect opportunity to discuss why some animals seem to change very little over time whereas others exhibit comparatively rapid evolution. But the book is very readable, much more so than Gould's Structure of Evolutionary Theory, though both are very much recommended for a full understanding of evolution.

In addition to being a fabulous overview of large swaths of biological science, as one would expect from a book by one of the world's leading zoologists, this book is chock full of surprising insights that make it a page-turner. For example, did you know that the hippopotamus is more closely related to whales than to cows, horses, or camels? I didn't.

If you're interested in genealogy, this book has much to offer. Maybe you've been lucky enough to trace your ancestry as far back as the middle ages, which probably amounts to going back to fifteen or twenty great-grandparents into the past. This book allows you to trace the same idea into deep time to learn, for example, that our (estimated) 175-million-greats-grandparent was the the ancestor we all share with modern-day amphibians.

At over 600 pages, I couldn't hope to do justice to its many surprising and informative tangents beyond pointing out that this tracing of ancestry is the book's overall plan. Dawkins takes his reader on a journey into the past roughly modeled on the pilgrimage of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, starting at the present day with modern humans and stepping back in time to add "pilgrims" (evolutionary forebears), all the way back to the beginnings of life on earth.

Here's a hopelessly partial list of good reasons to read this book:

* Because you want to understand evolution.
* Because you want to marvel at the diversity and wonder of life on earth.
* Because you want to rebut many of the common distortions of evolution and biology presented by creationists and "intelligent design" (ID) enthusiasts.
* Because you want to become familiar with some of the legitimate and ongoing controversies in biological science. (Note that creationism/ID versus evolution is not such a controversy. Actual scientists recognize that creationism/ID is not science.)
* Because you want to understand how real biologists work -- how they arrive at the conclusions at which they arrive.
* Because you want an excellent example of expository prose.

Too good!

This book consists of scores of mini-essays on evolutionary biology by one of the world's greatest explainers organized as a march backwards in time to each of the 40 common ancestor along the human evolutionary tree, all the way back to the origin of life on earth more than 3 billion years ago. While the book is full of insights on topics as varied as nuclear versus chemical reactions and the origin of language as demonstrated by molecular analysis of the "grammar" gene, the most significant point I drew out of the book is that biology as it is currently taught in our schools is either misguided or irrelevant. Repeatedly Dawkins demonstrates that our old second-best solution of comparing organism morphologies to try to deduce essential relationships did not get us very close to the truth. We now know that the rate of DNA change isn't correlated with morphology, and many supposed connections that we had previously made based on morphology are wrong or distorted. For example, whales are closer molecularly to cows than cows are to pigs. In fact, the only category that has any meaning at all is the term "species," which tautologically means a set of organisms that can interbreed only with other members of that "species." The current practice of spending biology class memorizing the arbitrary categories that are not actually based on any objective criteria (phylum, genus, etc.) in Dawkins' view is the product of the human "discontinuous mind," which has a tendency towards pointlessly categorizing certain things as "archetypes." On the contrary, says Dawkins, there are lines of gradual continuity linking every species to every other. If we could put one of our number in a time machine and send him back 1000 years to mate with a human who lived at that time, and then send his son backwards another 1000 years with the same result, at each thousand year point interbreeding would be possible, until you got to the origin of life on earth. Similarly, species living in a geographical ring around some otherwise impenetrable geographic barrier can breed with the organism next to them on the ring even if those at the ends of the ring can't breed. Our insistence on putting separate labels on organisms that in reality are intimately related, says Dawkins is "a pandering to our own limitations." If you forget morphology and look only at genes, "all animals are minor variations on a very particular theme."

Dawkins gives plausible explanations for the origin and development of all of life starting with the oxygen-less atmosphere of the early earth. Oxygen-less atmosphere plus warm ocean plus lightning yields amino acids, which can yield RNA, which can serve as both a necessary catalyst and the crucially important unit of heredity, without which there can be no natural selection. Sponges, which, when disaggregated into individual cells seek each other out and form back into colonies, provide a model for how a multi-celled organism might have arisen. The resulting tree of inherited life forms upon which natural selection has acted has three branches, with us, the plants and fungi being minor twiglets clustered together on one of the three; there are a wide range of microbes that are molecularly more different from each other than we are from plants. Not taught in my biology class.

I learned through multiple examples that Dawkins provides that organisms are differentiating into species literally before our eyes. I learned that the key to evolution are isolated populations on land or in water "islands" that are close enough together to allow for gene flow that is rare but not absent, and that a new taxonomy of mammals developed just in the last few years recognizes four categories that developed on four different geographic islands. I learned that most physical characteristics have evolved multiple times; for example, eyes have separately evolved 40 different times. I learned that the proponents of intelligent design have yet to name a single "irreducibly complex" function that can't plausibly have evolved from earlier forms serving other functions.

Possibly the single most pervasive characteristic of all life, according to Dawkins, is its embracing of community, in the sense that lower-level units flourish in the presence of each other. This sense of community starts with the single cell: animal cells house communities of alpha-proteobacteria that we now label "mitochondria," which separately reproduce and create the energy that cells need. Plant cells house communities of green bacteria that still have their old cell walls, which we now call "chloroplasts," which turn photons into energy. Bacteria stuck to other bacteria on the cell walls of protozoa move the organism. The protozoa in turn digests cellulose for primitive termites. Animals can be thought of as errand-runners for stationary plants. Etc., etc.

Also fascinating is Dawkins' discussion of the radically different forms that single organisms can take, possibly as a result of a natural tendency for evolution to evolve progressively easier methods for organisms to adapt. Each individual contains the full instruction set for each lifestage. A frog could make an adult tadpole, given the right conditions. All that would need to happen is for the reproductive organs to mature early in the tadpole and have metamorphosis be suppressed. The axolotl as an adult looks like a water-dwelling larval salamander but the adult land salamander that doesn't exist in nature currently can be produced with thyroid hormones in the lab. The ostrich is a essentially a baby bird (with the wing stubs and down of an overgrown chick) that can reproduce. We are perhaps juvenile apes that can reproduce, and chimps, none of whose pre-human ancestors can be found as fossils, are perhaps descended from the same juvenile bipedal humanoids that gave rise to us, with the difference that they have reverted back to the adult quadripedal ape stage.

Every page of this book yields similar insights. While the 600 pages appear daunting, upon finishing this incredible book you will never view the world around you in quite the same way again.

I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable book. There are too many things I liked in it to do anything more than describe a few of the highlights in this brief review.

The book begins with a general introduction. This covers many things that are necessary for understanding the material presented later. This includes geological time scales, DNA and a high level view of evolution. The one qualm I had with the book was in this part. In brief, he mentioned Lee Smolin's model of the universe where the constants of the universe evolve by producing black holes, these black holes produce new universes with slightly different fundamental constants and so on repeating over and over. This would lead to a sort of evolution of the universes through natural selection of the fundamental constants, i.e. those constants that produce more black holes are selected for. I appreciate the analogy, but even if this model hasn't been falsified there isn't any reason to believe it either and I'm not really sure it makes evolution easier to understand. In any case it's a small quibble.

After this introduction the main part of the book is developed. At a very high level this consist of starting with humans today, then traveling backwards in time it looks at where the human branch meets other branches. He provides some general information about when this most recent common ancestor lived and what it may have been like. The chapters typically end with some fascinating information about a living species from the "other" branch. For example the first "rendezvous" looks at where the human branch meets the chimpanzee branch (that is the last common ancestor for the chains) and then he gives a brief lesson about bonobos. The second rendezvous looks at the branching between the human/chimpanzee line and the gorilla line, and so on. He almost only considers intersections with branches that have representatives still living today.

For me this approach took a little getting used to. I'm used to the more typical approach of starting with a common ancestor and looking at its branches. However, once I got used to it I liked it.

I'll give a couple of examples that I enjoyed the most. My favorite was where monotremes joined, the zoology of platypus was fascinating. I had always thought of it as just an odd egg laying mammal, but there is much more to them than that. The rendezvous with new world monkeys had a great discussion of color vision. It was a very readable discussion of color vision in general and dichromatic, trichromatic and tetrachromatic color vision. More specifically how it applies to the Howler Monkeys. There's too much interesting information in the book to even try to summarize it.

Naturally the exact sequencing of rendezvous' becomes more speculative once you travel back far enough in time, but the author is very upfront about where there is controversy and gives his most plausible estimate. These last few rendezvous' were also quite interesting. They contained a lot of material that surprised me for one reason or another. For instance that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. This surprised me, but when I thought about it I realized I didn't have any reason to be surprised.

The final chapters contained some general remarks about evolution and a discussion of what it know about the origin of life. His discussion of the possibility of RNA being the original replicators was masterful.

If you've read any of Dawkin's books before you won't be surprise to hear that a lot of insights into geology, physics and other science is included within the book. Not to mention some extremely funny comments.

I think the best compliment I can give the book is that it reminds me of how rich and beautiful the natural world is and after reading more than six-hundred pages I was sad to be at the end of the book.

Specifically, is it wrong that I'm using this book for the third time as bedtime reading material and am actually staying up later than I should? This enormous, densely written tome would seem at first to be a monumental bore, but I find it a compelling read time and time again!
The metaphor of the whole of modern life, meeting up and converging on that time when all life was one, gives a slight understanding to how complex evolution has been, and how much time it has taken. The fact that virtually identical genes can be found in creatures as different as whales and fruit flies shows just how related every living thing is. The idea that DNA is more of a recipe than a blueprint, makes the fact than any of us are here just that much more weird and wonderful. Dawkins' thoughts on human culture as a barrier that has exaggerated racial differences are disturbing and intriguing.
Once I am finished with this reading, I will put it away, slowly absorb what little I could wrap my head around this time, swear I'll never read it again, and come back for another go round in six months or so. I'll do so grudgingly at first, but soon find myself lost as Dr. Dawkins sweeps me and all my fellow organisms back to our beginnings.

The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins is one of the best "popular science" books of the last 20 years. It is excellent for several reasons: (1) Style. Dawkins' writing is perfect for the material. He writing is clear and succinct, yet passionate. It is obvious that Dawkins' is filled with awe of, and love for, the natural world. He delights and revels in the manifold wonders of animals and life. He communicates his joy consistently and you find yourself sharing it (if you don't already). Also, he writes in a very personal way. It feels more as if you are having a conversation with him than hearing a lecture or reading a book. (2) Intelligence. Dawkins' does not assume that the reader is familiar with the science he writes about. However, he assumes the reader is intelligent and willing to think and learn. If you read this book expecting everything in it to be simple, you will not enjoy it. However, there is nothing in it that a reasonably educated and motivated person would not understand. Like much in life, you will get out of it what you are willing to put into it. Personally, I appreciate this approach - it's why I read non-fiction - to learn something new. (3) Breadth. The number of subjects covered in this book is amazing. You will learn about everything from human evolution to cell biology to bird sex to mammalian sonar. It's breadth is staggering, but not overwhelming. (4) Structure. This part is worth a whole new paragraph!

The structure Dawkins' chose was unusual and risky, but it works. He models the book after the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. The book starts with humans, and then progresses backwards to each "fork" or "split" (I'll use "juncture", here) in our particular genetic tree (our phylogeny). At each "juncture" he stops and explains why scientists think that particular branching occurred then, and, most importantly, "who" is joining "us" at that juncture. In other words, we would normally say, modern humans split off from our earliest ancestors about 5 million years ago and one branch developed into us today and the other branch led to two other extinct hominid species (example only). In The Ancestor's Tale, the story starts with us (homo sapiens), then stops at such a point (5 million years ago) and states "At this juncture modern humans are _joined_ by two hominid species". You have to imagine that every existing species has started a journey (a "pilgrimage") backwards along their own particular family tree. Ultimately, every single modern species will "roll up" into the first living thing (the "rolling up" includes all now-extinct species too). In theory, the book could have been written from any current species' perspective and the book would have ended up at the same place. Naturally, Dawkins' (and he assumes the reader, too) is more interested in following our own particularly human path. Dawkins coins the term, "Concestor", for the ancestor met by all the pilgrims at a particular juncture. So you follow along in the book as humans meet up with all primate "cousins" at the first primate ancestor, then the concestor of all mammals, then eventually all vertebrates, then the concestor of all animals, all eukaryotes, and then the to biggest mystery of all, the first living creature - Concestor 1!

The paragraph above explains the structure of the book, but the structure serves as scaffolding to tell "tales". At each juncture, Dawkins picks one of the species that joins up with the pilgrimage to tell a particular "tale". Each tale is about some aspect of biology or evolutionary science. I can tell you that ALL of them are good. But any given reader will find some of them even more fascinating than others. I certainly can't list them all here, but there are "tales" by Bonobo Apes, Lungfish, Platypus (platypii?), Velvet Worms, and Redwood Trees. And the subjects range from radiometric dating, to cladograms, to how biologists know what they know and what they don't know, to interesting examples of convergent evolution, and much interesting material on the exciting discoveries (and many mysteries) in the investigation of the basic relationships between the major kingdoms of life and the first living cell.

I've read much Dawkins and like most of his stuff. Some is better than others; but this one is by far his very, very best (I've read it twice). If you like reading about evolutionary biology, or just biology, you MUST have this one on your shelf. Period.

In this weighty volume Richard Dawkins uses the concept of common ancestors to make a wide variety of illustrative points about evolutionary biology. The underlying premise is that every organism living today has an unbroken chain of ancestors going back to the origins of life. If we were able to travel backwards in time we would meet these ancestors and as we did so, we would meet ancestors shared in common with different species. New species arise, and gradually diverge, from the parent species by evolution. This gives rise to a branching tree of life. Reversing the time-line then, we would first encounter the most recent branch point and so the first ancestor common to the species under consideration and those most recently separated from (and so most closely related to) it. Dawkins is here concerned with us humans and so as we move backwards in time we work our way through the ancestors we recently shared with chimpanzees, primates and so on, all the way to bacteria.

This approach forms the framework for a discussion of a vast variety of concepts, presented in chapters dealing with the individual branch points and ancestors. Those that I found particularly interesting were techniques for dating fossils, how species separate and the implications for what race means in humans, current thinking on the division of life into kingdoms and the very meaning of life (this is actually the wrong question, but I wont give away the real one), among many others. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Rhinosporidium seeberi (which causes a nasty infection of the human nose) is not actually a fungus. There is even a discussion of Philip Pullman's `His Dark Materials' trilogy with regard to the possibility of evolving a biological wheel and why this seems only to have happened in bacteria. All of this makes for a very erudite and enjoyable book. Molecular biology has clearly led to a sea change in our understanding of the relationships between species.

The only criticism I have is that perhaps the scope of the book is too ambitious. There is such a great wealth of detail that some complex concepts are compressed into perhaps too few pages to be developed completely. In any case, it does make fascinating reading although at least some grounding in biology is required. I regret that I was never thought biology from this perspective. The recurring theme is that biology makes no sense except in the context of evolution.

An interesting journey back in time to the dawn of life. As Alexandre Dumas often used historical figures as nails to hang plots on, Dawkins met and told the stories of cousin life forms along the backward pilgrimage and sowed knowledge and thoughts in those tales.

And again and again, the diversity and versatility of life amazed me. This is a truly wonderful world for people with discerning eyes and a sense of curiosity.

I expected this to be merely a general audience book of comparative zoology laced with "fun facts", but The Ancestor's Tale is much more substantial than that. It is a hefty tour d'horizon of the present state of knowledge in biology and paleontology. And he frequently cautions the reader that he is flying over details that would require other books to dig deeper into. It's quite a trip.

Some of the more amazing tidbits include "ring species", which are species in which variants shade into one another as you go through the animal's range, so that individuals from opposite ends of the range seem to be different species. He also performs a service by explaining how complicated and vague it is to trace people' ancestry by genetics, much more so than the genetic mail order family tree firms let on.

The reader who is interested only in the science must be prepared to steeple his fingers and wait, during the author's many political asides. He calls the hypocritical euthanasia proponent Peter Singer "the distinguished ethicist" for example, and failed Tanzanian socialist supremo Julius Nyerere a great statesman. Fortunately these outbursts, which really do make him seem like a stereotypically nasty Englishman, are soon over, and back we go on the journey.

Of the many themes in the book, the main one is what a marvel it is to live in the present era of molecular paleontology. The genes speak after the bones have clammed up, nowadays. Taxonomy is being re-written by the month, and our knowledge of life's journey is pushing further and further into the past. The pilgrim might find a more congenial guide to this Canterbury than Dawkins, but he won't find one more knowledgeable.

This book has been written with the general audience in mind, nonetheless, the subject matter of the book can be technical and dry at times. However, should one give the 600 plus pages a pensive read, one is bound to learn more about modern Zoology/Evolutionary Biology than he/she has possibly bargained for. My last Zoology course was over 25 years ago as an undergraduate, and I am simply in awe of how much our knowledge base in this area has changed since then.

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Dawkins eloquent discussions on our human tendency to dichotomize or categorize the world around us. He refers to this affinity as the "tyranny of the discontinuous mind," and provides intriguing biological explanations for this behavior. In my humble opinion, I think any individual who wants to truly grasp a global view of human behavior, should do some readings in Evolutionary Biology, and The Ancestor's Tale is a superior choice.

This is one of Prof. Dawkins' best books. Unlike some of his recent efforts, which were "Dawkins Lite", Ancestor's Tale is a witty, detailed look at the development of life, using a Chaucerian pilgrimage as a frame. It shows Dawkins at his best as a scientist and as a prose writer. I will not attempt to surpass the fine and detailed reviews appearing at this site. I will note, however, that Dawkins does not regard Evolution as a Communist plot, and on one or two points he makes sly remarks that some very thin-skinned people have interpreted as insufficiently repectful. The former is a necessity for any detailed discussion of the topic, the latter is an incidental of no great importance. Indeed, the so-called comments that others decry as "American-bashing" come to no more than 10 words in the whole book, and the only American to be "bashed" at any length, is Richard Lewontin. That episode is unfair, but it is a tiny part of the book.

There is one point I would like to make, something that prospective buyers might want to think about: the book was published in both the U.S. and the U.K., but the British edition, by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, is rather different from the American. With a slightly different title(Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life, rather than to the Dawn of Evolution), it has glorious illustrations and a more luxurious format. It will set you back 25 pounds plus shipping, but if you are thinking of putting this book into your permanent collection, and that is where it deserves to be, you might want to consider making the investment and getting it from the store.uk. Just use the link at the bottom of this page.

This book is wonderful. The allegory of a journey back in time, drawing in more of the currently extant species as we meet common ancestors, fits perfectly.

The framework is roughly this: we humans will start in the present and head back along our ancestry until we meet the nearest common ancestor we have with an existing species. Chapters are more or less organized around these junctions. Dawkins uses the opportunity to spin out fascinating essays on related subjects: we'll get a description of the ancestor, the group joining us, and then some development of an idea that comes to mind. Sometimes it's a discussion of taxonomy, or sexual selection, or ring species. What have you.

Dawkins's writing is instantly accessible, and perpetually fascinating. The topics are wide-ranging and thrilling. We are granted the latest developments in evolutionary biology, exciting in themselves, but even more so as Dawkins represents them.

Sadly, the author has a habit of throwing in petulant political comments. Some mix of immaturity and egotism must be responsible: either Dawkins thinks his mastery of evolutionary biology extends to political science, philosophy, and ethics (it doesn't appear to), or he's just not mature enough to keep from dropping snide irrelevancies. It's not that his views are wrong--they're not, but he has nothing interesting to say about them. How a condemnation of affirmative action fits into a book about evolution is a mystery.

In this astonishing display of biological knowledge, Richard Dawkins, with a cue from Chaucer, sees the progression of life forms as a pilgrimage,a pilgrimage that apparently will go on forever. And it will go on forever because life forms have no purpose of their own, their only purpose is to replicate. The book could be entitled: Tht March of the Replicators". That is all it sees: a universe of replicators going nowhere.

Even his fellow human beings he sees merely as replicators. In the pilgrimage of life forms, there is no Canterbury. there is only unending replication.

The human mind and intellect, music, literature, the human family, art, science, education, the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, the art of Rembrandt, Raphael and Michelangelo, everything we call civilization and culture, mathematics, the cosmos, the visible world around us, the Bible, Chartres Cathedral, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the United Kingdom, the Wisdom of the Greeks and the religion of the Jews, as well as the Vatican, horseracing - an endless list - exist only so life forms can replicate themselves - and he expects us to take him seriously?

He has even discovered new replicators: memes. He has a whole chapter on them in "The Selfish Gene". They are his version of the human and intellect, and there is one for religion, too, which he posits as an invader of the meme pool, or at least a mysterious intruder. And hoe does this religion meme replicate itself: by the spoken and written word, by art, music, literature, in other words, by culture. He apparently came upon this meme colony on the Starship Enterprise. It is his way of didmissing the rational foundation for the existence of God, and the human and rational structure of human civilization and culture.

He seems not to have reflected that if his meme pool is true, his evolutionary biology is only a meme, a fiction inserted into the human mind so that life can replicate itself ad infinitum.

"The Ancestor's Tale" is an astonishing collection of evolutionary and biological information, but it is a procession going nowwhere, replicating itself- to what end? That is the question that emerges fron Richard Dawkins evolutionary encyclopedia, Infinite replication is not semething most people can get excited about. It is Reductio ad Absurdum, Reductio ad Absurdum, Reductio ad Absurdum...

The creationist sputterings aside, nearly everyone who reads this book agrees that it is great.

Actually, it is a fine 2nd or 3rd book on biology, but I'm afraid that the nuts and bolts of some very important stuff isn't covered here. I'd recommend starting somewhere that you might get a basic look at DNA, embryology, ecology, and so on.

To most readers, I'd strongly recommend Dawkins' "River out of Eden" rather than this book. It has the merit of being about 500 pages shorter, and being much more introductory.

On the other hand, if you've read a few dozen pop science books, as I have, you won't find a lot of new stuff here. To Dawkins' credit, he doesn't repeat material from his own earlier books, but he's not above telling us what we might have read in a Matt Ridley or Carl Zimmer or David Quammen book.

All that said, I devoured this book in just a couple days, despite not having that much time for it. The basic premise, going backwards through time, imagining our ancient ancestors, was exhillerating, and Dawkins is exactly the guide I'd want on such a fantasy pilgrimage.

His politics occasionally surface, and perhaps not for the better of the book, but the biology is of course the main attraction, and it just doesn't get better than this.

This is a very elegantly compiled history of life on our planet. I am very pleased to see Dawkins set his considerable intellect and science writing talent to this worthy challenge and accomplish it so delightfully. This is a very readable book in spite of its scientific seriousness. Dawkins at once captures both the grand story of life on earth and many of its details.

Dawkins is at his best revealing the sweep and awesome power of modern evolutionary biology here rather than spewing contempt on the mass of humankind and their superstitions as he has so often done in other work. Near the conclusion of the book, Dawkins comments that "My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world."

If you have an interest in the wonders of living things and curiosity about where this amazing diversity truly comes from, this book will be your welcome companion on a fascinating journey from start to finish.

Dawkins, Richard; The Ancestor's Tale

Written for the store.com, December 26, 2006.

The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins is one of the best "popular science" books of the last 20 years. It is excellent for several reasons: (1) Style. Dawkins' writing is perfect for the material. He writing is clear and succinct, yet passionate. It is obvious that Dawkins' is filled with awe of, and love for, the natural world. He delights and revels in the manifold wonders of animals and life. He communicates his joy consistently and you find yourself sharing it (if you don't already). Also, he writes in a very personal way. It feels more as if you are having a conversation with him than hearing a lecture or reading a book. (2) Intelligence. Dawkins' does not assume that the reader is familiar with the science he writes about. However, he assumes the reader is intelligent and willing to think and learn. If you read this book expecting everything in it to be simple, you will not enjoy it. However, there is nothing in it that a reasonably educated and motivated person would not understand. Like much in life, you will get out of it what you are willing to put into it. Personally, I appreciate this approach - it's why I read non-fiction - to learn something new. (3) Breadth. The number of subjects covered in this book is amazing. You will learn about everything from human evolution to cell biology to bird sex to mammalian sonar. It's breadth is staggering, but not overwhelming. (4) Structure. This part is worth a whole new paragraph!

The structure Dawkins' chose was unusual and risky, but it works. He models the book after the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. The book starts with humans, and then progresses backwards to each "fork" or "split" (I'll use "juncture", here) in our particular genetic tree (our phylogeny). At each "juncture" he stops and explains why scientists think that particular branching occurred then, and, most importantly, "who" is joining "us" at that juncture. In other words, we would normally say, modern humans split off from our earliest ancestors about 5 million years ago and one branch developed into us today and the other branch led to two other extinct hominid species (example only). In The Ancestor's Tale, the story starts with us (homo sapiens), then stops at such a point (5 million years ago) and states "At this juncture modern humans are _joined_ by two hominid species". You have to imagine that every existing species has started a journey (a "pilgrimage") backwards along their own particular family tree. Ultimately, every single modern species will "roll up" into the first living thing (the "rolling up" includes all now-extinct species too). In theory, the book could have been written from any current species' perspective and the book would have ended up at the same place. Naturally, Dawkins' (and he assumes the reader, too) is more interested in following our own particularly human path. Dawkins coins the term, "Concestor", for the ancestor met by all the pilgrims at a particular juncture. So you follow along in the book as humans meet up with all primate "cousins" at the first primate ancestor, then the concestor of all mammals, then eventually all vertebrates, then the concestor of all animals, all eukaryotes, and then the to biggest mystery of all, the first living creature - Concestor 1!

The paragraph above explains the structure of the book, but the structure serves as scaffolding to tell "tales". At each juncture, Dawkins picks one of the species that joins up with the pilgrimage to tell a particular "tale". Each tale is about some aspect of biology or evolutionary science. I can tell you that ALL of them are good. But any given reader will find some of them even more fascinating than others. I certainly can't list them all here, but there are "tales" by Bonobo Apes, Lungfish, Platypus (platypii?), Velvet Worms, and Redwood Trees. And the subjects range from radiometric dating, to cladograms, to how biologists know what they know and what they don't know, to interesting examples of convergent evolution, and much interesting material on the exciting discoveries (and many mysteries) in the investigation of the basic relationships between the major kingdoms of life and the first living cell.

I've read much Dawkins and like most of his stuff. Some is better than others; but this one is by far his very, very best (I've read it twice). If you like reading about evolutionary biology, or just biology, you MUST have this one on your shelf. Period.

Reading "Ancestor's Tale" reminds me of reading the "Book of Knowledge" as a child. You never know what delight awaits you next. It might be a technical topic like a terrific write-up on plate tectonics, in which the image of a roll topped desk is invoked, or it might be some zoological topic which Dawkins finds interesting on its own account (Dawkins' sense of interest and wonder is infectious), and which may be used to illustrate some larger idea. Thus, the book overcomes its "plot". Going backwards in time (as contrasted to forward) does not work very well, nor does the whole emphasis on when the ancestors of various current animals first coincided with our own ancestors. For one thing, genetic "closeness" has surprisingly little correlation with any intuitive measure of closeness. Thus "trouts are closer cousins to humans than they are to sharks". For another, we frequently do not know what these common ancestors were like, and Dawkins does not emphasize speculations. I think it is much more interesting that birds (really their dinosaur ancestors) and mammals developed warm bloodedness through parallel evolution than how many millions of years ago their ancestors split. Based on Dawkins' recommendation, I am currently almost through reading Robert Bakker's book on dinosaurs; because it focuses on function rather than on DNA, it actually is more informative. I have heard that Dawkins can be controversial, but he seems to be happy to acknowledge ignorance, or to specify when he is choosing among possible alternatives. He does seem to be very against "punctuated equilibrium" without every giving more than a superficial write-up of just what it is he is against.

Professor Dawkins has given us not only an entertaining book, but one packed with fascinating information about our evolutionary ancestors. Working through the metaphor of Chaucer's famous pilgrimage, he leads us back in time to our evolutionary antecedents, the while providing clear explanations and interesting and amusing anecdotes. He also takes the time to debunk some of the more common misconceptions about evolutionary theory: that it leans heavily on fossil record data, for instance, or that it amounts to supposing that a hurricane could blow through a room and happen to knock together a 747: a convenient overlooking of the minor matter of long-term selection and other gradual forces.

The only distraction for me was the author's tone when discussing people he disagrees with: for the most part Creationists who distort scientific findings to support their faith-based arguments, although he also knocked environmentalists like me as "airheads" for believing in a correspondence between breathing forests and working lungs. The professor has a habit of going beyond the issues to get personal, and it's snooty enough to make the psychologically educated reader wonder just who he's really going after, strafing away at times with the aggressive persistence of the fighter jets he says recur in his dreams. I think a day will dawn when that level of reductionist striking from above must wonder whether it too displays a disconcerting tendency toward what Jung would have seen as projection of the shadow.

All in all, however, I greatly enjoyed the book and was very interested to learn so much that I had not seen in other books on the topic.

Dawkins has written more important books: "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Selfish Gene" were essential reading for all. He's written more academic books: "The Extended Phenotype" dots all the i's and crosses every t. And he's written more impassioned books: "A Devil's Chaplain" contains wonderful, heartfelt essays.

But for me "The Ancestor's Tale" beats them all. People joke about "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things", but Dawkins shows how much we know about the truth of this. The scope is breath-taking - in time, in detail, and in the range of perspectives that he invites us to share. I read this book during a week-long business trip, and Dawkins' device of a pilgrimage seemed particularly apt: I savoured every moment, and finished it just as I arrived home.

One of the most important stories in the book is "The Salamander's Tale", in which Dawkins considers what he calls "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind". He starts out with the familiar account of "ring species" such as gulls and salamanders, and arrives, with Mayr, at the judgement that it took us so long to arrive at the idea of evolution because of Platonic essentialism. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ESSENCE. Dawkins doesn't directly assert what seems obvious to me - that religious opposition to evolution arises from essentialism - but he makes clear just how destructively essentialism continues to bedevil science. And when I concluded that story, I was almost startled to realize that it comes less than half way through the book, at rendezvous 17 out of 39. After amphibians we still have to meet fishes, worms, cnidarians, fungi, plants, and so on, leading up to the Great Rendezvous and thence to Canterbury - the first replicator.

At the end, I found myself in awe of how much we humans know, how much we've discovered about life, how rich and multifaceted that knowledge is, and how much more there is to learn. "The Ancestor's Tale" is without doubt the best book I've read in 2005; I expect that it'll be one of those few books that I return to again and again.