Out of Eden - Stephen Oppenheimer

Imagine an airline counter queue in London. Seven people stand looking in different directions. One is a solicitor of Afro-Caribbean origin, another a blond-headed girl whose family come from northern Europe, another a computer expert who was born in India. The fourth is a Chinese teenager listening to a Walkman. The fifth, sixth and seventh are all attending a conference on rock art and come respectively from Australia, New Guinea and South America. They are quiet and avoid eye contact because they neither know each other nor feel related in any way. Yet it can be proved they are all related and ultimately all have an African female and male ancestor in common. This book presents findings that radically alter our existing views of humanitys global migration. Drawing on a synthesis of breaking genetic, archaeological and climatic evidence, Stephen Oppenheimer shows for the first time that all modern non-Africans sprang from a single exodus out of Africa, rather than multiple waves of migration. The implications of the single-exodus model are immense. For example, it means we have to rethink the origins of the Upper Palaeolithic cultural revolution and also the geographic origins of human creativity. Until now it has been assumed by many that Europeans were the first to learn to paint, carve, develop complex culture and even to speak. Oppenheimer shows how the structure of the full genetic tree denies this. The book follows our ancestors halting progress around the world to the Mammoth Steppe heartland of Asia and the now submerged continent of Beringia, and on to the last great unpeopled lands of the Americas. It is a story of equal importance to us all.

Further details of the findings in this book are presented at www.bradshawfoundation.com/stephenoppenheimer/