02-01-2008, 05:53 AM
THE REAL EVE by Stephen Oppenheimer. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. 440 pages, appendices, notes, index. Hardcover; $25.00. ISBN: 0786711922.
Geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer is a member of Green College at Oxford. This is Oppenheimerâs second book on human evolution and genetics. Its purpose is to illuminate the peopling of the world by anatomically modern humans (AMH) through the mtDNA and Y-chromosome lineages. The seven chapters start with explaining the Out-of-Africa Theory and then move through the change from archaic hominids to moderns, the first steps into Asia and Australia and the peopling of the Americas.
Oppenheimer presents a great argument against the view common among Christian apologists that intelligent, rational humans arose suddenly within the past 60,000 years in Europe, where there was a flowering of art and Upper Paleolithic tools. If this had happened, then everyone on earth who can speak, draw, or write must have descended from the Europeans. Not only is this a terribly Eurocentric idea, it is also impossible based upon the genetic evidence. MtDNA and Y-chromosome trees are rooted in Africa, not Europe. Besides, art first appears on earth, not in Europe but in Australia. Oppenheimer argues that those humans who left Africa 100,000 years ago were speaking. Thus all of their descendantsâthose of us alive on earth nowâcould speak as well.
When it comes to the peopling of the New World, Oppenheimer presents some interesting ideas for explaining the genetic distribution and variations seen among Native Americans. Americans in the north, where they were supposed to have lived the longest, have the least genetic diversity. Americans living farther south have much greater genetic diversity. Oppenheimer explains this by suggesting that the last glaciation forced people south and then after the glaciation, limited groups with limited diversity moved back north.
Other interesting ideas in the book are that language existed 2.5 million years ago, and existed in two different generaâHomo and Paranthropus. Oppenheimer vigorously defends the concept that the human intellect did not suddenly flower 35,000 years ago. He also chides anthropologists for engaging in that time-honored human tradition of finding one group and denigrating them. In this case, it is the Neanderthals whom Oppenheimer says were basically like us. He also demonstrates a huge mtDNA genetic divide between peoples west of India from those farther east. He ascribes this divide to the eruption of Toba, which was the largest volcanic explosion in the past 100,000 years. It turned India into a wasteland of ash, dividing the peoples.
One weakness of the book is that Oppenheimer tries to follow too many genetic lineages. Trying to follow a logical argument with sentences like, âAs I mentioned in Chapter 5, A, C and Z are characteristic of North Asia â¦â is very difficult. One must have the memory of an elephant to follow such an argument. And it does not end there. Each Y-chromosome and mtDNA lineage is given the name of a mythical person and that does not seem to help either.
Oppenheimer is a committed Out-of-Africa proponent although initially he does not sound like one. Early on, he reminds his readers that the vast bulk of our nuclear genes come to us from hominids on earth long before anatomically modern humans appeared. He then notes (p. 49) that it is very difficult to construct genetic trees from nuclear DNA so evidence of AMH and archaic hominid interbreeding could be found. This clearly sounds like the words of a multiregionalist, an anthropologist who believes that there was gene flow between the ancients and AMH. But then, inconsistently with his own words, Oppenheimer proceeds to discount any possibility of archaic genes and interbreeding, stating over and over that the archaics went extinct without passing on any of their genes to us. This is a disappointment because it is so illogical and this illogic is so foundational to the book.
The book is worth having if only as a reference for following the mtDNA lineages. It would have been better had the discussion of those lineages been clearer.
Reviewed by Glenn R. Morton, 10131 Cairn Meadows Dr., Spring, TX 77379.