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开 本: 16开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 精装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9781400062157
In The Journey of Man, renowned geneticist and
anthropologist Spencer Wells traced human evolution back to our
earliest ancestors, creating a remarkable and readable map of our
distant past. Now, in his thrilling new book, he examines our
cultural inheritance in order to find the turning point that led us
to the path we are on today, one he believes we must veer from in
order to survive.
Pandora’s Seed takes us on a powerful and provocative
globe-trotting tour of human history, back to a seminal event
roughly ten thousand years ago, when our species made a radical
shift in its way of life: We became farmers rather than
hunter-gatherers, setting in motion a momentous chain of events
that could not have been foreseen at the time.
Although this decision to control our own food supply is what
propelled us into the modern world, Wells demonstrates—using the
latest genetic and anthropological data—that such a dramatic shift
in lifestyle had a downside that we’re only now beginning to
recognize. Growing grain crops ultimately made humans more
sedentary and unhealthy and made the planet more crowded. The
expanding population and the need to apportion limited resources
such as water created hierarchies and inequalities. The desire to
control—and no longer cooperate with—nature altered the concept of
religion, making deities fewer and more influential, foreshadowing
today’s fanaticisms. The proximity of humans and animals bred
diseases that metastasized over time. Freedom of movement and
choice were replaced by a pressure to work that is the forebear of
the anxiety and depression millions feel today. Wells offers a
hopeful pre*ion for altering a life to which we were always
ill suited, recommending that we change our priorities and
self-destructive appetites before it’s too late.
A riveting and accessible scientific detective story, Pandora’s
Seed is an eye-opening book for anyone fascinated by the past
and concerned about the future.
Foreword
One: Mystery in the Map
Two: Growing a New Culture..
Three: Diseased
Four: Demented
Five: Fast-Forward
Six: Heated Argument
Seven: Toward a New Mythos . .
Acknowledgments
Sources and Further Reading
Index
“Fascinating—this book has some very new ways of looking at very
old issues.”
—Bill McKibben, bestselling author of The End of
Nature
“Spencer Wells—explorer, geneticist, geographer, and author—takes
us on an exciting tour of the last 10,000 years of our history in
order to forewarn us of what we shall have to deal with in the next
50 years.”
—Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA, and
Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and
Steel
“Spencer Wells’s writing combines a deep knowledge of the history
of human evolution with a most engaging and lively manner of making
that story come alive. Pandora’s Seed draws upon compelling
anecdotes and moving personal narratives to crystallize a crucial
turning point in the history of our species, the point at which
modern human beings stop and look back at our long evolutionary
trajectory, and confront squarely its dark side, its cost. With
this knowledge, Wells deeply believes, we can take the necessary
steps to chart a common, humane future over the crucial next half
century. Pandora’s Seed reflects Wells’s deep learning, and his
deep love of our all too human community.”—Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University and
author of Tradition and the Black
Atlantic
“Spencer Wells has a provocative and timely message. He argues
that we are at a critical juncture where our culture could destroy
the very essence of what it means to be human. His closely argued
and thoughtful essay gives us hope and a blueprint for the future
that relies in part on lessons from peoples who still retain links
with the distant part. Everyone with a stake in humanity’s future
should read this book.”—Brian Fagan, author of The Great
Warming and Cro-Magnon
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