We are reading "She Has Her Mother's Laugh" by Carl Zimmer. He has several books and I enjoyed "Planet of Viruses". When I looked at what else he has written, I saw the Laugh title. I was clear from the title that the book would be about ancestors and human descendants. As we have been progressing through the book, several references and stories were familiar. Ever since we had our DNA analyzed by the now closed Genographic Project run by the National Geographic Society, I have been getting more aware of and information about genetics, human evolution and the disbursal of humans from Africa to the rest of the planet.
I remember reading Christine Kinneally's "The Invisible History of the Human Race" and I remember being negatively affected by the story of various attempts to "improve" humans using execution, sterilization, segregation and shame. As a student and professor of school testing and grading, I am familiar with the ins and outs of sorting and discriminating between and among humans.
In addition to having our DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project, we had an analysis done by 23andMe. We bought little books about the findings. Lynn's ancestors' locations make a list twice as long as mine. Mine are European: English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Scandinavian. She also has Native American and some Ashkenazy. I have some Neanderthal and Denisovan, which are other branches of humans, along the lines of Cro-Magnon. I guess the most affecting book on human dispersal and descent I have read is "The 10,000 Year Explosion" by Cochran and Harpending.
