Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, Bloomsbury, £17.99, ISBN 07475606
EXCAVATING the human genome for clues to human evolution and migrations is a something of a battlefield. The ground rules of this new science – known as historical genetics or archaeogenetics – are still being worked out, and there is vigorous disagreement about which approaches are best. So where can you find a balanced overview of what has been achieved?
In the brilliant if idiosyncratic Where Do We Come From? (Springer-Verlag, 2001), Jan Klein and Naoyuki Takahata make their sympathies plain: get it from the horse’s mouth. Science writing, they argue, is…
