Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book & Must Read By All People
Review: If all people were to read this book and fully understand it and its implications, life would be completely different and better for so many. This is a wonderful and refreshing book that is easy to read for the most part. This book connects humanity together as brothers, sisters, cousins, not wholly other. Race is an social construct that can be destroyed just as it was invented, but it will take much time. This book is a good start.
Rating:
Summary: The story of our race, the human race
Review: It is a fortunate fact of history that wrongful prejudice can scare bear the light of truthful inquiry. Olson provides this truthful inquiry in his search for the origins and migrations of the human race from the African continent of 150,000 years ago to today. For those who have or would claim a "superior race" they find quick and strong rebuke in the fact of a common racial human origin. Today, there are some seven billion people on the planet. Two thousand years ago, that figure was around 200 million. One hundred thousand years ago, that figure was around 10,000. Ten thousand humans lived in Africa 100,000 years ago. We are therefore all litterally extended brothers and sisters. This book is the story of our race told through the unbiased perspective of our mitochondrial DNA. For those straining to recall high school science, our mitochondria are power plants of our cells. In evolutionary prehistory, they merged with regular cells before humans even existed. Because of the nature in how they are passed on, their DNA can be uniquely examined with an eye toward reviewing our maternal history. In this way, the story of our mothers becomes the story of us, taking us all back to same stooped endangered group of humans living in prehistoric Africa. This book is an excellent book to be read in conjunction with other historical studies, anthropological studies or studies on human development. Olson's accessible writing style makes his points easy to grasp and his obvious enthusiasm contagiously makes you want to read on and better understand.
Rating:
Summary: The story of our race, the human race
Review: It is a fortunate fact of history that wrongful prejudice can scare bear the light of truthful inquiry. Olson provides this truthful inquiry in his search for the origins and migrations of the human race from the African continent of 150,000 years ago to today. For those who have or would claim a "superior race" they find quick and strong rebuke in the fact of a common racial human origin. Today, there are some seven billion people on the planet. Two thousand years ago, that figure was around 200 million. One hundred thousand years ago, that figure was around 10,000. Ten thousand humans lived in Africa 100,000 years ago. We are therefore all litterally extended brothers and sisters. This book is the story of our race told through the unbiased perspective of our mitochondrial DNA. For those straining to recall high school science, our mitochondria are power plants of our cells. In evolutionary prehistory, they merged with regular cells before humans even existed. Because of the nature in how they are passed on, their DNA can be uniquely examined with an eye toward reviewing our maternal history. In this way, the story of our mothers becomes the story of us, taking us all back to same stooped endangered group of humans living in prehistoric Africa. This book is an excellent book to be read in conjunction with other historical studies, anthropological studies or studies on human development. Olson's accessible writing style makes his points easy to grasp and his obvious enthusiasm contagiously makes you want to read on and better understand.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice overview, but no science classic
Review: Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel opened the eyes of a lot of us to questions about human origins. There is the widely-known work of Rebecca L Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allan C Wilson using Mitochondrial DNA to show how all living humans are descended from a single, small band of homo sapiens who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. There is the tale of the Lemda, an South African group whose Jewish origins were proven with the discovery of a special DNA sequence on the Y chromosome found only in men descended from the Biblical Aaron, the so-called cohenism gene.I had hoped that this book would follow Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, and Thomas Sowell as an overview of what is currently known about our origins, from a DNA-based genetic perspective. Steve Olson is a science journalist, not an academic, so it's too much to ask that he compete with Steven Pinker in original or bold thinking, but his writing style holds up well by those standards. He divides his story into easy-to-understand discussions of people on each continent: Africa, where we all began 200,000 years ago. The Middle East, the geographical bottleneck through which every group passed on its way to the rest of the world. Jews are especially interesting, because they kept much of their identity intact while mixing with the rest of the world. Asia and Australia are lumped together because, surprisingly, the aborigines are one of the oldest groups out of Africa, probably riding around the Indian ocean on their way south. Europe is where the Neandertals lived until as recently as 30,000 years ago. Although they used stone tools and fire, they were not true humans, and the question of whether they mixed with homo sapiens was answered conclusively in the negative through recent tests on DNA recovered from old bones.
Finally, North America offers a glimpse at the clovis cultures and the growing evidence of pre-clovis people. Olson grew up in Washington State and digresses to talk about Kinnewick man, the 13,500 year-old Caucasian skull discovered there in 1996. Here we also learn about the "Mongoloid spot", a patch of bluish skin found near the base of the spine in some children of Asian descent-also seen among native Americans (but never Europeans or Africans), more evidence of their Asian history. Unfortunately Steve Olson is a big believer in the Blank Slate hypothesis, that it's dangerous to think about biological evidence that races are different, so his book veers toward political correctness at all costs. Generally this is a readable book, though you will be disappointed if you come hoping that its status as a National Book Award finalist means it can compete with the likes of Guns Germs and Steele. It can't.
Rating: 
Summary: Clarity of Explanation, Not of Purpose
Review: Mapping Human History is essentially a book about the peopling of the various major geographical locations in the world, with evidence mainly from genetics, archaeology, paleoanthropology and linguitics. Quite unashamedly repetitively, the author vehemently denounces and debunks ideas of ethnic superiority and purity. It begs the question of whether his purpose is scientific or political. The book covers 5 major geographical areas: Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia, Europe and the Americas. The author chooses the areas quite obviously because they have always been the major areas of civilisation and also, because of the strong links of humanity within each area. Olson goes on to explain the origins of the peoples within each area, with special emphasis on genetic similarities. The author also cleverly inserts pertinent discussions beyond genetics for each area. For example, under Africa, the idea of genetic unity of humanity is elaborated as more and more scientists and laymen accept the idea of modern humans originating from Africa. There are further discussions of languages for the part on Asia since Asia has some of the most diverse languages in the world. The issue of immigration in modern Europe is dissected for the part on Europe. As for the Americas, the Human Genome Diversity Project, which aims to collect the genetic diversity of peoples, especially the ancient races like the Native Americans, is treated, with arguments from both sides presented. There has been new knowledge that I gathered after reading this book. The concepts of mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome are introduced. They have been the main source of tools to trace the genetic history of humans. Particularly exciting is a short chapter on the synthesis of genetics, archaeology and linguistics. It is a recent development and promises to give refreshing ideas on the history of humans. Scientists and linguists are trying to synthesise linguistic evidence, genetic sequences and archaeological finds to put to rest the unending debates of where and how humans migrated and developed. Many of the reviews of this book have criticised the political motivations of the author. He unceasingly denounces racism on the basis of genetic superiority, an idea disproved by science. Although race and racism is abhorrent, we must always remember that genetics has always relied upon race as a basis of analysis. Samples of DNA are classified according to race, physical traits are sometimes racial stereotypes, race is the basis of genetic comparisons and many others. Perhaps race and genetics are intertwined and on that basis, both the author by denouncing race as a misguided concept and his critics by denouncing him, are wrong. Beyond genetics and the flaws, this book has achieved clarity of explanation-though a clarity of purpose is less clear- and a good discourse of latest theories relating to development of humans.
Rating:
Summary: Mapping Human History
Review: Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes written by Steve Olson is an easily readable book mapping the history of man. This is a compelling detective story that illuminates as well as entertains.This book will change your view, if not already, about human past and will forever change how we think about ourselves and the relations with others. The narrative is an easy read and complex genetics is ritten in an easily understandable style that the layperson can understand and comprehend.
Rating: 
Summary: Unfulfilled Promise
Review: Mr Olson's book starts out extremely well, but sags after a few chapters. The initial segments on mitonchondrial DNA and our genetics is probably the most readable and understandable treatment that I have seen. About halfway through the book, however, Olson stops trying to trace human migration and development. His emphasis becomes avoiding rascism. At this point, the history and science dwindles away and the emphasis becomes how intermixed our gene pools are. It was almost as if his underlying motivation was a desire to use science to prove a political position. It became rather pedantic at this point. I was very disappointed after the strong start that the book made.
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Summary: It is not scientifically true
Review: Mr. Olson is trying to tell our history with his limited knowledge of tranmission genetic (Mendelian genetics). A lot of his statements are basically incorrect. Although he is trying to explain how genome information can help us to understand ourself, he misused genetic information. It is very unfortunated that a lot innocent people will be misled by his naive statements in the book. Do not waste your time to bother it.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and proves that racism is biologically wrong
Review: Not only is this book superbly well written, so that mere graduates with humanities degrees like me can understand it, but it also shows that racism is biologically wrong, which is wonderfully ironic since it is biology that racists in the past have used to argue that their pernicious and evil doctrines are scientifically correct (such as Hitler).
Rating:
Summary: No More Races
Review: Olson presents the history of human race in this book, and his conclusion is that races don't exist. Of course there are some superficial physical differences, but if we look closely at the genetic record, there is no evidence of any great differences, and certainly not any differences great enough to divide humanity into races. One of the discoveries on which he bases his claim is that of the scientific Eve, a woman from which all living humans have descended, which makes us all related. He goes on to present the fact that through the continual mixing of ethnic groups throughout history, it is likely that we are all related even more closely than we think. For example, almost all African-Americans have European ancestors, and many white Americans have African ancestors.
With these scientific truths coming to the fore, one hopes for an end to racism in the world. Unfortunately, racism isn't based on rational thought, but on irrational culture. Only through education can we eliminate it. I strongly recommend this book. If you're teaching any kind of multicultural studies class, you should definitely use this book as one of your sources.
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