The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution [Paperback]

Richard Dawkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2005

With unparalleled wit, clarity, and intelligence, Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most renowned evolutionary biologists, has introduced countless readers to the wonders of science in works such as The Selfish Gene. Now, in The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life four billion years ago. Throughout the journey Dawkins spins entertaining, insightful stories and sheds light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection, and extinction. The Ancestor's Tale is at once an essential education in evolutionary theory and a riveting read.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Just as we trace our personal family trees from parents to grandparents and so on back in time, so in The Ancestor's Tale Richard Dawkins traces the ancestry of life. As he is at pains to point out, this is very much our human tale, our ancestry. Surprisingly, it is one that many otherwise literate people are largely unaware of. Hopefully Dawkins's name and well deserved reputation as a best selling writer will introduce them to this wonderful saga.

The Ancestor's Tale takes us from our immediate human ancestors back through what he calls ‘concestors,’ those shared with the apes, monkeys and other mammals and other vertebrates and beyond to the dim and distant microbial beginnings of life some 4 billion years ago. It is a remarkable story which is still very much in the process of being uncovered. And, of course from a scientist of Dawkins stature and reputation we get an insider's knowledge of the most up-to-date science and many of those involved in the research. And, as we have come to expect of Dawkins, it is told with a passionate commitment to scientific veracity and a nose for a good story. Dawkins's knowledge of the vast and wonderful sweep of life's diversity is admirable. Not only does it encompass the most interesting living representatives of so many groups of organisms but also the important and informative fossil ones, many of which have only been found in recent years.

Dawkins sees his journey with its reverse chronology as ‘cast in the form of an epic pilgrimage from the present to the past [and] all roads lead to the origin of life.’ It is, to my mind, a sensible and perfectly acceptable approach although some might complain about going against the grain of evolution. The great benefit for the general reader is that it begins with the more familiar present and the animals nearest and dearest to us—our immediate human ancestors. And then it delves back into the more remote and less familiar past with its droves of lesser known and extinct fossil forms. The whole pilgrimage is divided into 40 tales, each based around a group of organisms and discusses their role in the overall story. Genetic, morphological and fossil evidence is all taken into account and illustrated with a wealth of photos and drawings of living and fossils forms, evolutionary and distributional charts and maps through time, providing a visual compliment and complement to the text. The design also allows Dawkins to make numerous running comments and characteristic asides. There are also numerous references and a good index.-- Douglas Palmer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The diversity of the earth's plant and animal life is amazing—especially when one considers the near certainty that all living things can trace their lineage back to a single ancestor—a bacterium—that lived more than three billion years ago. Taking his cue from Chaucer, noted Oxford biologist Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, etc.) works his way narratively backward through time. As the path reaches points where humanity's ancestors converge with those of other species—primates, mammals, amphibians and so on—various creatures have tales that carry an evolutionary lesson. The peacock, for example, offers a familiar opportunity to discuss sexual selection, which is soon freshly applied to the question of why humans started walking upright. These passages maintain an erudite yet conversational voice whether discussing the genetic similarities between hippos and whales (a fact "so shocking that I am still reluctant to believe it") or the existence of prehistoric rhino-sized rodents. The book's accessibility is crucial to its success, helping to convince readers that, given a time span of millions of years, unlikely events, like animals passing from one continent to another, become practically inevitable. This clever approach to our extended family tree should prove a natural hit with science readers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (September 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061861916X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618619160
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (209 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution > Organic

More About the Author

Richard Dawkins taught zoology at the University of California at Berkeley and at Oxford University and is now the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position he has held since 1995. Among his previous books are The Ancestor's Tale, The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, and A Devil's Chaplain. Dawkins lives in Oxford with his wife, the actress and artist Lalla Ward.

Customer Reviews

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489 of 515 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greeting your grancestors, October 21, 2004

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Hardcover)

A magnum opus from a scientist isn't common these days. Usually, their writings are in stacks of journal papers, with the occasional monograph highlighting a career. Journal articles remain buried in academic libraries, down the aisle from dusty tomes. Dawkins, however, is charged with the task of improving the "public understanding of science". With such a mandate, he is free to indulge in some innovative techniques. In this epic journey through time, he accomplishes that with his usual finesse. Add the lavish illustrations enhancing the text, and you have an outstanding depiction of evolution's saga.

Unlike most general surveys of evolution, this one offers some novel approaches. First, of course, is its structure. Instead of vague beginnings, Dawkins opens with a period familiar to all his readers - the scenes around us today. Moreover, that focus is on the part of Nature of most concern to us - "All Humankind". We like to consider ourselves the "point" of evolution? So be it, Dawkins declares, but warns that a change in outlook will likely result as you read this book. From that point, he begins to work backward in time. He stands Chaucer on his head by adding "pilgrims" to our journey at certain waypoints. The "pilgrims" are the Most Recent Common Ancestor of the present population of creatures. Since he begins with Homo sapiens, the most recent common ancestor, which Dawkins [rather, one of his graduate assistants] deems a "concestor", is of course the ancestor of today's chimpanzee.

It is a shock to most readers to learn we can make the traverse of nearly 4 billion years in but 39 steps [Hitchcock would have loved it!]. In tracing our mammalian ancestry, Dawkins is able to aid us in peering at the innermost secrets of our bizarre relatives. We meet colugos and tree shrews, mammoths with tusks like shovels, tarsiers and tigers. Nearly halfway along the track we are confronted with a superb essay on our nervous system. Using recent studies of the Platypus, we learn how our brain interacts with the rest of our bodies. A model human, proportioned to show how much our limbs are represented in the brain confronts us. Huge hands and lips extend from a minuscule torso perched on spindly legs. Our grasping abilities clearly helped drive the enlargement of that organ taking so much of our body's resources. In Platypus' case, the lips play the major role, since this creature uses its unusual properties to investigate its environment.

As we progress along the path, the information about our ancestors grows less certain. Is this creature in the proper genus? Is this miniature swimmer indeed unique in its classification? What is the divergent point between mammals and reptiles? With the introduction of reptiles, the birds finally join the trek. Dinosaurs, not being in the direct line leading to humans, are given short shrift. No matter, the books on these long-successful creatures are beyond counting - and the number grows constantly. Further back, he is able to introduce the unicellular world. It gives him an opportunity to explain the lifestyle of some of our planet's most fascinating life forms. Hair-trigger cells that capture food prey or ward off predators. Glorious, worm-like creatures "too good for a goddess", despite their human-derived appellation.

In his educational role, Dawkins must confront the insidious spread of Christian-inspired simplistic hype over evolution. He must take up space refuting its propaganda and invalid assumptions. With so much to cover, this is an unfortunate aside. Yet in dealing with their rants about "irreducible complexity", Dawkins demonstrates yet again that Darwinian principles provide the mechanisms for all life. The energy nodes in our cells, the mitochondria, he reminds us, are the vestiges of bacterial invaders, co-opted to a new role. Flagella, the great bugaboo of "intelligent design" adherents, are simply another chemical process. In his concluding way stations, Dawkins shows how these elements originally lived.

Although Dawkins notes throughout the book that science has a formidable task still ahead, with many mysteries to be resolved, this book will long endure. With its comprehensive scope coupled with the author's always compelling style, it belongs on every bookshelf. We need more such writers and their books. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

335 of 356 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb but very, very detailed, November 19, 2004

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Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Hardcover)

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.

125 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Our ancestors from primates to amoebas and beyond, October 26, 2004

By 

Alan Naftalin (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Hardcover)

I have read every book by Richard Dawkins since I stumbled over "The Blind Watchmaker" -- an absolutely brilliant exposition of how evolution works -- a number of years ago, and have found him to be the clearest, most cogent and, for the lay reader, most enjoyable explainer of evolution and its works I have found. It is no accident that Dawkins holds an Oxford Chair as Professor of the Public Understanding of Science.

In "The Ancestor's Tale," taking the title from Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," Dawkins takes us on a pilgrimage backward in time, describing the ancestors of mankind, starting with the first human farmers and Cro-Magnon man, and working back step by step to bacteria. In the course of this long tale, we are introduced to all classes of life and and their evolutionary connnections with us, as well as to many evolutionary concepts and issues. All in all, this is a fascinating and enjoyable book and well worth reading. I would have given it 5 stars except for the occasional gratuitous remark about the conduct of the United States in the world which is not within Dawkins' field of expertise.

One further point may be worth mentioning. Some of the early reviews criticized the"Ancestor's Tale" for failure to prove the theory of evolution, particularly the absence of a conscious "Designer." But the "Ancestor's Tale" is not written to defend the theory. Read other Dawkins works for that, particularly "The Blind Watchmaker."