I shall confess that I had no idea who Richard Dawkins was before reading the Tale so my review should bshow little bias. I believe I stumbled about it after someone mentioned it as the quasi-Bible of contemporary Darwinism and, while I tend to stay away from 'ists' and 'isms' I was curious to learn where evolutionists were today. Some nearly 700 pages later I can say that I'm happy Mr. Dawkins took his time writing what in my view is an essential contribution to the important topics of what we are and how we ended up being this way.
We are all used to the evolutionary trees that show some shapeless blobs at the roots and 'man' right at the top on a branch that splits from 'ape' who don't rise nearly as high, dog and elephant on the lower branches, fish much lower, insect even lower still. It makes us feel good, well-evolved if we accept 'evolution' and at the conclusion of a process that began one or two billion years ago and culminated with our kids. But... Dawkins observes, it just happens that every single living organism today happens to be at the top of an evolutionary process that probably began one or two billion years ago (unless life came upon Earth through life-seeds carrying stardust). In other words, man, whale, butterfly, amoeba, starfish, we all happen to be the product of an unimaginably long process.
In Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins writes one of 10 million possible books that go back in time, tracing the ancestry of our species not because we are 'the best' or 'the most' but for the same reason most of us are more interested in our own family's genealogy than we are in our neighbor's. The book begins with today's humans and goes back in time all the way to the beginning of life, stopping here and there at the points (he counts 40) where 'splits' took place. For example, humans and chimpanzees split from a common ancestor a couple million years ago, going farther back, there was a common ancestor to the branch that produced us (humans and chimps) and gorillas, prior to that we (future gorillas, chimps and humans) split from orangutans and so it goes, down to some primordial, self-replicating organic soup.
But... wait... that would be too simple, right? There are 'genes' that tell the cells in our body (if we stay within the small branch of life that comprises multi-cellular forms) what to become and how to behave and, Dawkins observes, a totally different tale could be written from the point of view of any particular gene, many of them, present in almost identical form among many species. And it gets a lot more complicated than that when we begin trying to understand what's happening inside a cell, how cells ended up being that way, appreciating how unbelievably improbable both the complex cells that make up our bodies and their associations to form complex life forms happen to be.
Whether you are a Darwinist or not, and Dawkins is one, the Ancestor's Tale should be an important to read book for anyone curious enough to explore the whats, hows and whys of existence. The author has the ability to present the outcomes of the incredibly clever and complex work biologists do these days. He presents it all in ways that those of us who couldn't tell DNA from RNA would understand if not in every single detail at least at a level for being able to form a 'big picture' of biological existence.
And here comes the fair warning. Dawkins is a proud Darwinist and an atheist. He is fully convinced that 'evolution' is what made us to be the way we are and that there is nothing miraculous in the way 'matter' organized itself ti form 'life' way back then. And Dawkins is not an apologist. When scientific facts on his side he happily and sometimes harshly attacks what he views as the opposition - the intelligent designers. He views them as lazy and uncurious and he is not afraid to say so. And, like most of us humans, Dawkins has his own political and moral views. His occasional comments on issues such as 'war', mass entertainment or on contemporary politicians could make a reader laugh and nod in approval or throw the book away and vow to never again read anything 'Dawkins'. The latter would be a mistake because the parts that deal the the main topic of the book - walking back on the evolutionary path that brought us - are all well sourced and well presented.
Not only a history book of the human species and its ancestors, Dawkins's is an excellent introduction to the scientific method. In dozens if not hundreds of instances Dawkins not only presents the facts and the conclusions but he brings us everything to the level of understanding expected from a reasonably well-read non-biologist. He gives us the connections, the research, how the scientists arrived at the conclusions they did, what the opposition had to say and so on. It's fascinating.
I would not call The Ancestor's Tale a must read because nothing is but I would dare call it an essential read for biologists and non-biologists alike. Galileo changed the way we viewed our place in the Universe from 'central' to somewhere oh the periphery. Dawkins does something similar to our species, even better, to multi-cellular life, generally view as the top of existence or creation. And if you thought you knew for sure what 'species', 'cell' and 'life' where, read the book and expect to be surprised if not startled.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 15, 2018