Pandora's Seed

April 5, 2010
More food but also disease, craziness, and anomie resulted from the agricultural revolution, according to this diffuse meditation on progress and its discontents. Wells (The Journey of Man
), a geneticist, anthropologist, and National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, voices misgivings about the breakthrough to farming 10,000 years ago, spurred by climate change. The food supply was more stable, but caused populations to explode; epidemics flourished because of overcrowding and proximity to farm animals; despotic governments emerged to organize agricultural production; and warfare erupted over farming settlements. Then came urbanism and modernity, which clashed even more intensely with our nomadic hunter-gatherer nature. Nowadays, Wells contends, we are both stultified and overstimulated, cut off from the land and alienated from one other, resulting in mental illness and violent fundamentalism. Wells gives readers an engaging rundown of the science that reconstructs the prehistoric past, but he loses focus in trying to connect that past to every contemporary issue from obesity to global warming, and his solution is unconvincingly simple: “Want less.” B&w photos.

March 15, 2010
A population geneticist examines how human endeavors have shaped the world and finds that not all the changes have been beneficial.

When prehistoric man first sowed seeds some 10,000 years ago, they had no idea they were starting humans down the path to agriculture, settlements and civilization, a state now faced with grave challenges. Wells (Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project, 2006, etc.), director of National Geographic's Genographic Project, takes the reader back in time to reveal the alterations that have taken place since the Neolithic period within the human body, in society and in the environment. The author shows that farming and the subsequent growth and spread of populations led to enormous changes in human lifestyles that altered our DNA. More disturbing are the external changes. Shaping the landscape to grow plants and animals for food, Wells argues, has created a mismatch between human biology and the environment, which has promoted the spread of major diseases, such as malaria and AIDS. Further, he argues that our present densely populated, socially stimulating, noisy world is likely the reason for the rise in mental illness in most societies. Wells does not overlook the more familiar issues of environmental pollution and climate change, calling global warming the biggest social challenge of the 21st century. Most of the world's problems, he writes, stem from greed, and technology cannot provide the solution. What is required, according to Wells, is a new way of viewing the world. As we move further away from our origins as a species, he says, perhaps we should downsize our lifestyles and learn to want less.

At times demands close reading of fairly technical material, but the narrative is lightened by the author's informed firsthand accounts of encounters with people around the world.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 15, 2010
A geneticist and author of two general-interest titles (The Journey of Man, 2002; Deep Ancestry, 2006), Wells in this work concentrates on the beginnings of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Intrigued by traces of the transition from hunter-gatherer times that can be interpreted from the human genome, Wells chats with researchers on this topic and translates their methods and findings into jargon-free language. Combining the DNA discussions with descriptions of archaeological evidence, Wells maintains that putting away the spear and taking up the plow have not been unalloyed boons to humanity. Ascribing obesity, diabetes, malaria, dental decay, and other maladies to the carbohydrate- and sugar-rich diet unboxed by Pandora and the agricultural revolution, Wells further indicts another product of agrarian society, civilization, for contributing to mental illnesses. Pursuing this line of argument to modern anxieties about genetic selection in human reproduction and about climate change, Wells will appeal to a variety of science readers, including those interested in genetic anthropology, health, and the future course of human evolution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

July 26, 2010
Wells examines the positive and negative impact civilizations have had on the planet, from court hearings on genetically designed babies to the threat of environmental degradation on the Tuvalu Islands. His story brings the listener from a precivilized world to future possibilities that depend on the course of the next hundred years. Wells balances anecdotes and data with real world examples that embody the abstract concepts he proposes. However, his narration works against the material; the projection is inconsistent throughout, and at times, sentences that start strong sound breathless by the last few words. Wells's emphasis and modulation do not match the sophistication of the prose and fail to fully engage the listener. A Random hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 5).