Maxine

Very insightful and informative.

Reviewed: 01-18-23

Just what i needed to hear and encouragement to not give up. Thank you tons!

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Not What I Expected

Reviewed: 04-08-19

First, this is a brilliant book, and I certainly recommend it! However, be warned that it gets pretty technical and (at least for me) difficult to follow at times. Also, I would argue that it doesn't quite address what one might expect from the title. It is a rather comprehensive survey of the state of the science of genetic history, giving a picture of relationships of archaic and ancient human populations and their likely distributions over time. How any of this relates to human nature (as I interpret the meaning of the "who were are" question) is impossible to tell without understanding of the nature of those populations or how such nature might propagate. But if you're at all interested in how sequencing DNA of current and ancient humans has shed light on the migrations and interbreeding of human populations, definitely read this! Although later in the book, the author speculates some on what certain traits might have a genetic basis and how we may discover it, this book's value does not lie in interpretations of genetic traits. It's beauty is in the unapologetic unveiling of what we know so far about our ancient ancestry.

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13 people found this helpful

Somewhat annoying narration, but great book.

Reviewed: 06-01-17

As mentioned in previous comments, the narrator's mispronunciations were pervasive and irritating. Although that regularly aggravated my OCD, I found the content of the book was entirely worth it, and often helped me ignore it.

As to the content itself, I was utterly astonished at the amount of astronomical evidence the author gave against currently accepted theories ranging from dark energy and dark matter to the expansion of the universe! I must note, however, that although I am personally still on the fence regarding multiverse theories, I found his refutations of these ideas lacking. For the interested listener, I highly suggest "The Mathematical Universe" by Max Tegmark which gives a clearer explanation of quantum decoherence and how it actually supports the Everretian multiverse as opposed to Mr. Stewart's misinterpretation. Overall, though, I do highly recommend this book, as I haven't seen most of his assertions in anything else I've read.

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6 people found this helpful