Pandora's Seed: Why the Hunter-Gatherer Holds the Key to Our Survival - Softcover

Wells, Spencer

3.77

1,124 ratings by Goodreads

9780141016016: Pandora's Seed: Why the Hunter-Gatherer Holds the Key to Our Survival

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141016019 ISBN 13: 9780141016016

Publisher: Penguin, 2011

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In Pandora's Seed: Why the Hunter-Gatherer Holds the Key to Our Survival Spencer Wells takes us on a globe-trotting journey through human history, showing how we can learn from our ancestors in order to survive and thrive in the future.

We have better and more comfortable lives in the Western world than we did a few generations ago. So why aren't we happier, or healthier?

The problem is that humans were designed to hunt in the wild, not for crowded, urbanized living. The latest research reveals that when we settled and developed agriculture 10,000 years ago we may have created modern civilization, but we also opened a Pandora's box of problems - becoming sedentary, overpopulated, disease-prone and selfish.

In this provocative and fascinating book, Spencer Wells reveals how everything from our sweet tooth and stress disorders to environmental damage and even terrorism can be traced back to this mismatch between our genes and lifestyle - and how the solution to these problems lies in our hunter-gatherer roots.

'Civilization is the problem, not the solution ... Wells combines a cogent account of human evolution with an urgent call for global cultural reform'
The Times

'Spencer Wells - exporer, geneticist, geographer and author - takes us on an exciting tour of the last 10,000 years of our history in order to forewarn us of what we shall have to deal with in the next 50 years'
Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse

'Stimulating and enjoyable'
Financial Times

Spencer Wells is a leading population geneticist, documentary filmmaker and author of The Journey of Man and Deep Ancestry. He was previously director of the Population Genetics Research Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford and was recently appointed Frank H.T. Rhodes Visiting Professor at Cornell University. Wells is currently National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and spearheads the Genographic Project.

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Product Description:

Pandora's Seed Originally published in hardcover in 2010. Full description

Review:

Spencer Wells's writing combines a deep knowledge of the history of human evolution with a most engaging and lively manner of making that story come alive (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University)

Compelling. (The Independent)

Stimulating and enjoyable. (Financial Times)

Civilization is the problem, not the solution...An urgent call for global cultural reform. (The Times)

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