The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins, Steve Olson

Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins

Steve Olson

In a journey across four continents, acclaimed science writer Steve Olson traces the origins of modern humans and the migrations of our ancestors throughout the world over the past 150,000 years. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Mapping Human History is a groundbreaking synthesis of science and history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including the latest genetic research, linguistic evidence, and archaeological findings, Olson reveals the surprising unity among modern humans and "demonstrates just how naive some of our ideas about our human ancestry have been" (Discover). Olson offers a genealogy of all humanity, explaining, for instance, why everyone can claim Julius Caesar and Confucius as forebears. Olson also provides startling new perspectives on the invention of agriculture, the peopling of the Americas, the origins of language, the history of the Jews, and more. An engaging and lucid account, Mapping Human History will forever change how we think about ourselves and our relations with others.


Steve Olson's Mapping Human History was a National Book Award finalist and won the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. Olson has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, and Science.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
  • Publish Date: Apr 1st, 2003
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.54in - 0.75in - 0.66lb
  • EAN: 9780618352104
  • Categories: Life Sciences - Genetics & GenomicsAnthropology - PhysicalWorld - General

About the Author

Olson, Steve: -

Steve Olson's Mapping Human History was a National Book Award finalist and won the Science-in-Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. Olson has also written for the Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, and Science. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland, where he coaches the math team at a public middle school.

Praise for this book

"Olson raises the level of discourse to a new high, assembling powerful evidence to support the no-races hypothesis." Kirkus Reviews

"An engaging and fast-paced look at a subject that has profound implications for our everyday lives." Publishers Weekly

"An instructive overview of human history." Boston Herald --