Thomas Trappe

"Thrilling . . . a bracing summary of what we have learned from] 'archaeogenetics'--the study of ancient DNA . . . Krause and Trappe capture the excitement of this young field."--Kyle Harper, The Wall Street Journal Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics--archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology--which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. This Anatolian farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of people with contemporary European ancestry. Archaeogenetics has also revealed that indigenous North and South Americans, though long thought to have been East Asian, also share DNA with contemporary Europeans. Krause and Trappe vividly introduce us to the prehistoric cultures of the ancient Europeans: the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved flutes and animal and human forms from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe's most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. Genetics has earned a reputation for smuggling racist ideologies into science, but cutting-edge science makes nonsense of eugenics and "pure" bloodlines. Immigration and genetic exchanges have always defined our species; who we are is a question of culture, not biological inheritance. This revelatory book offers us an entirely new way to understand ourselves, both past and present.

Humans are the most intelligent beings this planet has ever produced. But how is it that we can travel into space, cure diseases and decode the fundamentals of life, and at the same time find ourselves faced with an existential crisis that threatens to overwhelm us? What lies behind this uncharacteristic failure to master the most important challenge of our existence? In this compelling book, the leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and the journalist Thomas Trappe investigate what DNA can tell us about how we got where we are and what our future might be. They show how the first humans were defeated again and again and suffered fatal setbacks, and how Homo sapiens succeeded in conquering continents, overcoming natural borders, and bringing other species under its control. But the genetic blueprint that enabled us to get to the place where we are today had one flaw: it didn’t factor in planetary boundaries. Now that we are approaching those boundaries for the first time after millions of years of evolution, an urgent question arises: can we learn to live within the available planetary limits, or are we doomed by our DNA to continue to expand, consume, and absorb the resources around us to the point of exhaustion, consigning ourselves and other species to extinction? Has our seemingly unstoppable rise met its ultimate end? While the looming climate crisis does not augur well for humanity’s capacity to adapt to the new situation in which it finds itself, we are not at the mercy of our DNA – or at least we don’t have to be. But can we harness the lessons of the past to survive the present? Now available as an audiobook.

Ihmiskunnan matka tarjoaa kiehtovan, hämmästyttävän retken ihmislajin varhaiseen historiaan ja nykyisyytemme juuriin. Teos on kansanvälinen bestseller, joka on käännetty lukuisille kielille ja saanut erinomaiset arviot eri puolilla maailmaa. Teos avaa menneisyyttämme tuoreeseen arkeogeneettiseen tutkimukseen tukeutuen. Muinaisista luulöydöistä on nykytekniikan avulla saatu valtavasti uutta tietoa ihmisen kehityshistoriasta, suurista vaelluksista ja varhaisten kulttuurien elämästä. Kymmenien tuhansia vuosien takaa esiin piirtyvät yksilöiden vaiheet kertovat siitä, miten sekoittuminen ja kyky liikkua uusille seuduille ovat olleet Homo sapiensin säilymiselle olennaisia. Etniset konfliktit, ylikansoitus, pakolais- ja ilmastokriisit, epidemiat: kaikki ne ovat vaikuttaneet jo muinaisten yhteisöjen elämään. Myös esivanhempiemme inhimillisyys koskettaa: luova mieli, kielet, taide, lemmikkieläimetkin, ne ovat kaikki olleet mukanamme hyvin varhain. Ihmiskunnan matka saa katsomaan menneisyyttämme meissä. Se on myös puhutteleva kertomus ihmislajin kyvystä selviytyä ja voittaa vaikeuksia. JOHANNES KRAUSE on arkeogenetiikan osaston johtaja Max Planckin evoluutioantropologian instituutissa. Hän on tutkinut muun muassa ihmisen geneettistä historiaa ja esihistoriallisia pandemioita. THOMAS TRAPPE on toimittaja, joka on kirjoittanut runsaasti tiedeaiheista ja seurannut pitkään Johannes Krausen tutkimuksia.