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Carregando... The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (2004)de Richard Dawkins
  
 TechThing | Jan 22, 2021 |  Masterly as ever. As a non-scientist I found it clear and easy to understand (apart from a few sections about creatures I'd never heard of). Little touches of humour or personal experience help to lighten what is really a hefty magnum opus covering the whole history and origins of life on earth. as the story delves deeper into the past and into the oceans, you get a sense of how tiny and perhaps accidental is Man; like looking into deep space . Heard an abridged version on audio some years back (of which I remember little); Worth a third reading. (  ) vguy | Jan 4, 2021 | One of Dawkins' best. While I agree with him wholeheartedly, Dawkins is a better writer when he's talking primarily about science, and not religion. Here, working within a framework, he manages to be utterly convincing and constantly astounds you with facts about nature and evolution. Love it. ( ) therebelprince | Nov 15, 2020 | Sadly the audiobook can only be found in an abridged version which finished way too fast. Dawkins never disappoints! I loved the book and will read it again unabridged when I do a second read of all his books. Hearing him talk about RNA and natural selection arms races are quickly becoming my favorite go-to intellectual pass time while going about my daily routines. I'm recommending it to any biology enthusiast out there. ( ) parzivalTheVirtual | Mar 22, 2020 | Orig. a class textbook, Mount Holyoke 2005-06 ( ) ME_Dictionary | Mar 19, 2020 |
 Beginning with modern humans and moving backwards in time, he describes our lineage as we successively join — a geneticist would say coalesce — with the common ancestors of other species. Human evolution has involved 40 such joints, each occupied by what Dawkins calls a "concestor", and each is the subject of a single chapter. He begins, of course, with our common ancestor with chimps, followed by the concestor with gorillas, then other primates, and so on through the fusion with early mammals, sponges, plants, Eubacteria and ultimately the Ur-species, probably a naked molecule of RNA. This narrative is engagingly written and attractively illustrated with reconstructions of the concestors, colourful phylogenies, and photographs of bizarre living species. The book is also remarkably up to date and, despite its size, nearly error-free. Especially notable are Dawkins' treatments of human evolution and the origin of life, the best accounts of these topics I've seen in a crowded literature. Evolutionary trees have become the lingua franca of biology. Virus hunters draw them to find the origin of SARS and H.I.V. Conservation biologists draw them to decide which endangered species are in most urgent need of saving. Geneticists draw them to pinpoint the genes that have made us uniquely humans. Genome sequencers draw them to discover new genes that may lead to new technologies and medical treatments. If you want to understand these trees -- and through them, the nature of life -- ''The Ancestor's Tale'' is an excellent place to start.  Dawkins has already expounded the arguments that form his vision of life, both in the natural and human realm. Now, having risen from the Bar to Bench, he is in a position to offer himself as judge and senior guide. In The Ancestor's Tale, he has become the kind of teacher without whom childhood nostalgia is incomplete: unflagging in his devotion to enlightenment, given to idiosyncratic asides. His mission is to tell the story of the origin of species backwards
Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.
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 Google Books — Carregando...Capas popularesAvaliaçãoMédia: (4.23)
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The Pilgrimage Begins - Ancestor's Tale
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...At least until, say, rendez-vous/chapter 20, when it's fish time. As Menno Schilthuizen writes in his review - see http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/591352332 - "The level of the text is rather uneven. Some chapters are splendid science writing, while others are humdrum, dense, or even impossible to wade through." And so I skipped the rest of the chapters to read the ending, the conclusion. Yes, it all is interesting how every species is connected, how one led to the other, etc... how bacteria lead to us and other animals. From humans to apes and monkeys over amphibians, fish towards flies and worms and ending with bacteria.
All in all, The Ancestor's Tale is a very good book and a must-read if you want to find out about heritage and how old species lead to new. But you've got to keep your mind to it. (