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| Author | Nicholas Wade |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Human evolution |
| Publisher | Penguin Group |
Publication date | 2006 (first edition, hardcover) 2007 (updated edition, paperback) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| ISBN | 1-59420-079-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-14-303832-0 (paperback) |
| 599.93'8-dc22 | |
| LC Class | GN281.W33 2006 |
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors is a non-fiction book by Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times. It was published in 2006 by the Penguin Group. By drawing upon research on the human genome, the book attempts to piece together what Wade calls "two vanished periods": the five million years of human evolution from the development of bipedalism leading up to behavioural modernity around 50,000 years ago, and the 45,000 subsequent years of prehistory.
Wade asserts that there is a clear continuity from the earlier apes of five million years ago to the anatomically modern humans who diverged from them, citing the genetic and social similarities between humans and chimpanzees. He attributes the divergence of the two species from a common ancestor to a change in their ecological niche; the ancestors of chimpanzees remained in the forests of equatorial Africa, whereas the ancestors of humans moved to open woodland and were exposed to different evolutionary pressures. Although Wade posits that much of human evolution can be attributed to the physical environment, he also believes that one of the major forces shaping evolution has been the nature of human society itself.
After humans migrated out of their ancestral environment of eastern Africa, they were exposed to new climates and challenges. Thus, Wade argues, human evolution did not end with behavioural modernity, but continued to be shaped by the different environments and lifestyles of each continent. While many adaptations happened in parallel across human populations, Wade believes that genetic isolation – either because of geography or hostile tribalism – also facilitated a degree of independent evolution, leading to genetic and cultural differentiation from the ancestral population and giving rise to different human races and languages.
The book received generally positive reviews, with the main criticisms centering on the work's use of the value-laden terminology of "race" over other, more neutral alternatives. In 2007, it won the Science in Society Journalism Award from the National Association of Science Writers.