Reddit reviews Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
We found 9 Reddit comments about Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 9 Reddit comments about Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I am not at all an expert on this topic, but I am reading Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors right now, a fascinating book on the history of humans that tends to favor genetic explanations above the more social anthropological explanations.
This book argues that race is a very real thing, but it has little to do with looks (which is how people traditionally separate out race, e.g. black, white). It argues there are clean genetic clusters (based on a small number of genes) that can be referred to as "human races". You can say this person is ~x% this cluster, y% that, etc. You are right that genetically individuals are very diverse, but some genes dominate in some races. Just a few 100 years can create some major genetic changes that are selected for in that group. This is a fact supported by many examples, like the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, or the long distance running abilities of East Africans.
It is possible to look at someone's genetic signature and map them to a cluster pretty cleanly. Whether you want to call this "race" or not is debatable given the terrible history of race relations, but that is just a semantic debate. The politically correct stance that there is no difference between human populations hides the truth for social reasons.
Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.
Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.
Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).
The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).
Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.
Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.
Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.
After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.
Happy reading!
edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.
A good summary of the origins of Australian Aborigines, as well as much of early human history, can be found in Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade.
>methodically state the case for why creation is most likely and/or why evolution is unlikely.
You will find lots and lots of the latter. Very little of the former.
>I'd also be happy to read GOOD anti-creation books as well, provided they meet the above criterion of not being mocking.
Those would just be science books based on the academic literature, wouldn't they?
Here is my reading list form the past few months. These would be pro-evolution (a.k.a science). Creationism is mentioned in a few of them, but almost in passing because Creationism is simply not a factor in legitimate scientific research, so it gets pretty much no consideration.
Knock yourself out. ;)
Back in the old days, most people were hairy hominids, but some had patterns of baldness across their bodies. This was novel, attractive. They got to be fucked more often. That baldness gene got past on. And now men want to fuck things like Kate Upton, Beyonce, or a Fleshlight.
See, Before the Dawn
I'll add Before the Dawn (http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X), which focuses on how scientists have used DNA to answer archaeological questions.
I'm sure how far back you want to start, but if you want to get into our ancient ancestors, I'd start with Before the Dawn. Follow that up with Cro-Magnon for a decent overview of the first modern human migrations into Europe. There is some overlap with After the Ice-Age, but the latter is a great resource describing the first transitions into agriculture.
The History of the Ancient World would be a good follow up; it's breadth is quite broad, starting with the ancient Sumerians and taking you up to the fall of the Roman Empire, but it's broken into small, readable chunks.
Hopefully this helps to get you started!
Also, if we are making suggestion for what to read, I strongly suggest Nicholas Wade's three somewhat recent books on the evolution of religions, cultures, and modern humans. It might allow you to take a broader view of what seem like neat and narrow issues. The audiobooks are well narrated if you prefer those.
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Dawn-Recovering-History-Ancestors/dp/014303832X/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Instinct-Religion-Evolved-Endures/dp/0143118196/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Troublesome-Inheritance-Genes-Human-History/dp/1594204462/ref=la_B001H6WF40_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410286302&sr=1-1
"no scientific consensus that black people are genetically predisposed to lower intelligence"
The report is by the APA from 1996. The APA in 96 to even acknowledge that there was a gap was a huge thing, considering its bias. Discoveries have ramped up in the last few years so I don't know why wikipedia is relying on sources from 94 & 96 considering the human genome mapping wasn't completed until 2003. Discoveries since then have been one after another.
It's no surprise wikipedia comes to the PC conclusion, but it suffers from problems. It acknowledges that the black-white test gap exists. Either it is genetic, or environmental. There has been decades of money, and time thrown at fixing the environment by rich billionaires like Gates, and others. Dozens upon dozens of education, nutrition, parent swapping (giving black babies to whites), and other experiments, and they all failed. There is not a single study in the world that can claim lasting gains in the IQ gap. This bit of evidence would point to a genetic basis right? That and the fact that twin studies (the only proper studies that can control for genes) shows intelligence, among other dispositions, are highly heritable. In that wikipedia page, they link to the actual numbers from the APA study: "A 1996 statement by the American Psychological Association gave about .45 for children and about .75 during and after adolescence."
Finally, does that statement even pass the laugh test? "Science" doesn't work by consensus, but if it did, wouldn't it be relevant to ask the actual scientists involved in intelligence research?
There are people with very high intelligence, very low IQ, and everyone between. Most people can recognize that height is highly heritable, but it isn't a guarantee, sometimes you are taller than your tallest parent, sometimes you are shorter than the shortest parents. Most times you regress towards the mean. The idea that the brain is a blank slate has been discredited by Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, and others. The brain comes with innate abilities, abilities that are partly inherited from your parents genes.
If you are actually concerned with finding the truth you can read Nicholas Wade, who writes for the NYTimes. The 10,000 Year Explosion. Or Gene Expression1. Or Gene Expression2. Rather than having your views filtered by whoever happens to be editing one of the many wikipedia pages.