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Loading... The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolutionde Richard Dawkins
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irá adorar Registre-se no LibraryThing tpara descobrir se gostará deste livro.  KenoticRunner | Oct 9, 2009 |  Fascinating Read: A terrific documentation of the current state of scientific discovery and understanding of evolution, particularly relating to genes. I was imparted with a greater comprehension of the workings of the "tree of life" - where it comes from and where it might go. Dawkins has a comfortable conversational writing style that is enjoyable to follow and digest. iayork | Aug 9, 2009 | Have not yet read, but I am re-reading Mani (Patrick Leigh Fermor) and he mentions Dawkins, then I came across this by chance in local second-hand bookshop and could not resist (one thing leads to another...)  overthemoon | May 29, 2009 | The ancestor's tale is a fascinating story which lots of interesting details. The format is based on the Canterbury tales. We go back in time back to the origins of life. On our journey, we are met by our distant cousins who 'join' the family tree. I have to admit my interest dropped somewhat as the cousins got more distant. I guess I'm just not that interested in flatworms and fungi as I am in nice furry creatures :-) Being a genealogist, I never would have thought that there could be someone too distantly related to be of interest to me, but there they were! What I liked is that this book challenges the way you look at the world. It is not an easy read. Even though my English vocabulary is pretty large (especially for a non-native speaker), there were plenty of words in there I didn't know: mainly names of creatures big and small. I was able to understand the words from context though, so didn't have to go for a dictionary which I always hate. Also, some of the concepts are very abstract and can be hard to grasp. I found that I liked that, it's nice to read a book that doesn't take its readers for granted but actually challenges them. All in all, a great read that just got a bit too slow in the end for my taste. (  ) yhoitink | Apr 13, 2009 | Wonderful book about a travel back in time to the origins of live. Every encounter with another species describes amazing adaptions to fit its natural environment. ( ) dungen | Apr 4, 2009 |  sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
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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
(retirado da Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:52 -0400)
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I wonder if, for me, there was something about the forward timeline and clear, discretely drawn branching of family trees of traditional teaching methods of evolutionary theory that made me want to see speciation as some sort of magical, point-in-time, event.
In contrast, by working from humanity backwards in time by relating to one's recent generations' genealogy, I was better able to conceive bushiness of the evolutionary tree as well as its more general flowing nature, being discrete only genetically, only in the changes between one generation and the next.
Yes, Dawkins can't help but sceech a little with his philosophy of relegion and politics, but a wonderfully presented, human-oriented, innovative and engaging explanation of evolutionary biology. (