The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

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The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

by Richard Dawkins (Goodreads Author)

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 8,208 ratings · 387 reviews

With unparalleled wit, clarity, and intelligence, Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most renowned evolutionary biologists, has introduced countless readers to the wonders of science in works such as The Selfish Gene. Now, in The Ancestor's Tale, Dawkins offers a masterwork: an exhilarating reverse tour through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial begi...more

Paperback, 688 pages

Published September 2nd 2005 by Mariner Books (first published 2004)

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Mar 14, 2008 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone interested in science, evolution, biology... life.

Poor Dawkins - he gets a bad reputation. People think he's mean and nasty and heartless and elitist.

Okay, I might have to grant people the "elitist" bit, because, well, I'm a bit of an elitist myself. But I dare you all to read this book and then tell me that Dawkins isn't a total squishy.

Let's just say this - he stops in the middle of the book to talk about how much he misses Douglas Adams, who was a dear friend of his. He waxes poetic about evolution and how much he wishes he could meet our...more

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Aug 15, 2011 GWC rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating zoology but plenty of flotsam. "The Beaver's Tale" "The Duckbill's Tale" and "The Axolotl's Tale" are outstanding examples of modern naturalism. The classical genetics is adequate but the molecular data is explained minimally and not compelling. More details on the challenges and uncertainties inherent in genomic sequencing and cross-species comparisons would have been helpful. When Dawkins is not discussing zoology the writing is overly verbose, and suffers the professor's conceit o...more

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Sep 05, 2007 Casey rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: science and animal lovers

Shelves: knowledge-is-good

After finishing The Selfish Gene, I rushed out to the store to buy another of Dawkins' books. While the size of this tome was quite intimidating, I found the premise utterly fascinating. The narrative traces humans' evolutionary ancestry, from primates to "concestor zero," or the beginning of life on Earth.

Dawkins' knowledge of zoology shines as he gives examples of the fascinating animals that share some of our genes. Readers will undoubtedly learn about plants and animals they had never heard...more

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Apr 08, 2010 Manny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, strongly-recommended, transcendent-experiences

On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something a...more On Monday, an old friend came round to lunch, and, while we were having a cup of tea in the living room, remarked on the number of Richard Dawkins books on my shelf. Somehow, I'd never heard that she'd actually had Dawkins as a supervisor for one term when she was an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 70s; it was in connection with the course she was reading on animal behaviour. I asked what he was like as a person, and she was unenthusiastic. Clearly very intelligent, but there was something about him that she found disquieting. She wouldn't go so far as to say that he'd behaved inappropriately, there was never a specific incident she could point to, but she constantly felt that he was just an inch from the line. Well... charismatic, thirty-something male supervisor, attractive young female undergraduate, animal behaviour, you can see plenty of scope for that. And she said that, even then, he'd go on about religion. After a while, she became increasingly sure that his hostile feelings were rooted in some kind of personal disappointment he'd suffered, though she had no idea what it might have been.

I asked her which Dawkins she'd read, and, like most people, it was The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. She hadn't particularly liked either one. I can sympathize with her point of view. But, as other reviewers here have said, Dawkins is a more complex person than he's generally given credit for, and if you read The Ancestor's Tale you'll see another side. I suppose one could say that he's attacking religion here too, but the strategy is completely the opposite of the blunt, in-your-face assault he uses in the The God Delusion; to my mind, it's also far more effective. Rather than tell you what's ugly and wrong about Intelligent Design, he concentrates his energies on showing you what's beautiful and right about evolution, and how, far from contradicting traditional religious beliefs, it reveals them with a clarity that previous generations have been unable to see.

I kept thinking of Saint Francis of Assisi, and his love of all living creatures. "Brother bird, sister ant"... they're beautiful poetic phrases. But what do they mean? Evidently, this finch can't literally be my brother. There is no way that my mother could have given birth to him. The conventional explanation is that we're both "children of God", which is fine as far as it goes; the problem is that it doesn't really shed much light on the nature of our relationship. The astonishing thing about evolution, which forms the core of this book, is that it shows how the bird and ant truly are my brother and sister. Well, not quite brother and sister - in fact, they're very distant cousins. Dawkins traces the family tree, and shows precisely how we're all related. He starts with the obvious cases (apes, monkeys), then goes back to other mammals, and then further through reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, sponges, plants and all the way to protozoa. On the way, he tells you some extraordinary stories. Well, that shouldn't be a surprise; think what interesting stories you hear when you meet up with a friend you used to know well, but haven't seen for a decade. Here, you are in some cases meeting up with people you haven't seen for several hundred million years.

At the end, I felt, as I had never felt before, how we're all one family in the plain, everyday sense of the word, and how we're linked though the genes we share, which we've inherited from our common ancestors. It's a truly incredible thought. As Dawkins says on the last page: it's not so much that he disagrees with religious people, it's more that they're saying it the wrong way. If you are yourself a religious person who wants to learn to be closer to God and His Creation, you could do worse than read this book.
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Jun 27, 2008 Jerzy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science, sixstars

Fantastic! If I'd read this in high school I would definitely be a biologist by now.
Often I agree with Dawkins' views on creationists, but usually he's an obnoxious ass about it. Thankfully, in this book he only disses them occasionally. For most of the book he sticks to his strengths, i.e., clear and exciting explanations of the beautiful yet structured diversity of the natural world.

Lots of nifty thoughts about how evolution works and how mind-shatteringly cool life is. There's an interesting...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Courtney rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: scienceisgreatifitsnotyourjob

The Ancestor's Tale is an incredible find! With a form based loosely on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins marches back in time to each of humankind's ancestors. Witty, brilliant and engaging, you will learn a great deal about evolutionary biology, and a million fun and intriguing facts. Whether you agree to disagree with the facts establishing evolution as a law of science, this book is worth your time. Plus, it is so dense and rich, you will feel proud to put it on your shelf after you have f...more

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Mar 30, 2007 Brian rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Creationists

Shelves: science-and-math, non-fiction

I've been a fan of Dawkins for a while solely based on interviews, but this is the first of his books I've actually read. It works its way backwards through the evolutionary tree, detailing how all living things are related - how a stranger on the street, your dog, your house plant, bacteria and you are all distant cousins. It's a fascinating read, technical enough if you're interested, but not so much so that it's threatening to the non-science minded. It's broken into various "tales" - "The Ho...more

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Jul 25, 2007 Doctordave rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

This is the best science book I read in 2006. The structure (moving backwards thru the history of life) is unique, and works for the most part. (Ok, it got a little boring when it lingered on things like nematode worms and the like near the end) The only thing I wish the book had...? Illustrations! I had to keep my laptop by my side and constantly Google the names of organisms i'd never heard of to see what they look like.

Dawkins is a seductive writer... I would recommend always reading somethin...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Robin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: All human beings, and other animals if they could read

This is my favorite book in the whole world. Someday it may be eclipsed by something else but for now it's this. What I love most about this book is the number of times I found myself thinking, "Wow, I had no idea". It makes perfect sense when you think it out, but the entire premise of the book, that every living thing on earth, from human being to plant to bacteria, shares a common ancestor, that actually existed at a point sufficiently far enough in the past. The book consists of a "pilgrimag...more

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Jul 26, 2007 Zach T rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone with at least a partially functioning brain.

Very well-written, extremely eloquent, not particularly abstruse. Incredibly informative, dense but not impenetrably so. Slightly cheapened by a few brief but unnecessary political comments. Jabs at religion are to be expected with a Dawkins book, but unless directly addressing creationist claims, also unnecessary. Particularly poignant passages regarding uncertainties of molecular dating issues. Historical perspective on how our understandings of various organisms & their phylogenies are th...more

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Nov 16, 2007 Miles rated it 4 of 5 stars

A great book. Also full of fun, amazing trivia about the mind-blowing diversity of life as well as the easily over looked fundamental links and commonalities between huge classifications of organisms. I learned from books like this that the full implications of the scale of universal time and space, as well as the far more finite scale of earthly life and development, and the implications of evolution are still only scarcely and slowly seeping into our consciousness and our view of ourselves and...more

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Jan 10, 2010 Snehal Bhagat rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Political economy basics are often explained with the help of an analogy: we imagine a beach in summer with people sun-bathing; for the sake of simplicity, we assume that the beach is one-dimensional- a straight line running from left to right- and that the people are distributed approximately equidistant from each other. An enterprising ice-cream vendor comes along with his cart and sets up shop - where should he position himself if he desires to maximize his sales?

Clearly, anywhere; for as lon...more

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Oct 23, 2010 Brian Hodges rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science, bloody-brilliant, life-changing, favorites

This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general.

By tracing our lineage back through these various “concestors” Dawkins mak...more This book blew my mind so many times in so many ways. It is quite simply the most fascinating thing I have ever read about life on this planet. Dawkins traces our evolution from the present day back through the very first organisms on earth. He uses various "rendezvouses" to show the points where we connected with other species and phyla and what those connections say about us, about our biology and about life in general.

By tracing our lineage back through these various “concestors” Dawkins makes you realize just how unique and amazing your own body is… amazing in ways you probably always took for granted. From the way we gestate to the fact that we have a spinal column to the way that our own cells even work. It was never a guarantee that we would have ANY of these things. It seriously makes you wonder how everything might have turned out had different evolutionary pressures been exerted millions, or even billions of years ago. For instance, had a meteorite not wiped out the dinosaurs, “we” would probably still be little more than tiny rodents scavenging for scraps at night while the REAL rulers of the planet slept.

Dawkins touches on this latter aspect in the final chapter, with a series of thought experiments about how things might go down if evolution were to “rerun” from the beginning. Which aspects of life would be likely to sprout up again? Which aspects were far-fetched happy accidents? Perhaps one of the most mind blowing statements Dawkins makes is in reference to eukaryotic cells, which comprise every form of life on this planet except for bacteria. The formation of these special and absolutely “necessary” cells was such a long shot evolutionarily speaking that Dawkins doubts it likely to have happened twice. In fact he goes so far as to say he thinks that the formation of eukaryotic cells was probably MORE unfathomable than the initial spark of life itself! Whoever said scientists strip all the magic and wonder out of the universe has obviously never read this book.

Dawkins' prose, as always, is fresh, illuminating, and often humorous, explaining heavy concepts so they make perfect sense to a layman. Seriously, if you're interested in this stuff at all, add this one to the very top of your list.

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Dec 21, 2008 Punk rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, science

Non-Fiction. 4 billion years of evolution, practically in real time. To avoid any "human-centrism," Dawkins -- famous for his outspoken stance against creationism -- does this backwards and models the journey on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Scared yet? Well, it's not in rhyme or Old English, but Dawkins does tend toward lofty language and wild, rambling digressions. It bugged me at first, but over the course of this SIX HUNDRED PAGE BOOK, I got used to it and even grew to appreciate Dawkins and h...more Non-Fiction. 4 billion years of evolution, practically in real time. To avoid any "human-centrism," Dawkins -- famous for his outspoken stance against creationism -- does this backwards and models the journey on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Scared yet? Well, it's not in rhyme or Old English, but Dawkins does tend toward lofty language and wild, rambling digressions. It bugged me at first, but over the course of this SIX HUNDRED PAGE BOOK, I got used to it and even grew to appreciate Dawkins and his sly humor. He actually made me laugh out loud a couple times.

The pilgrimage conceit holds up: we travel backwards in time to meet a series of common ancestors, starting with concestor 1 (for "common ancestor"), where mankind splits from the chimpanzees, and ending with concestor 39, the first life on Earth. At each stop he describes what that ancestor may have looked like, where it lived, and how long ago.

The Chaucer conceit never got off the ground. Most tales, like "The Armadillo's Tale," don't tell you anything about the animal the tale's dedicated to. There are a few exceptions to this, though, like "The Beaver's Tale" or "The Brine Shrimp's Tale." Those actually address the qualities of the animal in question, and were some of my favorites because of it.

One of the best things about this book is that Dawkins freely admits -- early and often -- that a lot of what he's talking about is based on limited data and/or guesswork and may be wrong. He goes out of his way to offer alternate theories and differing opinions, though he always singles out the position he finds most likely. I love it when scientists admit they don't know things, and Dawkins has no problem with that. He can sound arrogant and in love with his own voice (the number of times he quotes himself and his previous books!!!), but at heart I think he really loves the subject and wants to share it with people.

It's a long, and sometimes difficult, book to read. It gets into genetics, math, biology, taxonomy, chemistry, pretty much everything, and at times the explanations get messy or too technical. I liked the biology parts best -- the different ways organisms evolve and why, and there was plenty of that to keep me interested. It's a lot of information, though still a very basic look at the diversity of life. I started out reading it like homework -- 10-20 pages a day -- but after I got the hang of it, I was reading 30 and 40 pages without breaking a sweat. Did I enjoy it? I think so? I definitely know a little bit about a LOT of things now, and it made me want to read more about evolution.

Three stars for the book and the information it provides, and FIVE stars for me for making it through.(less)

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May 24, 2011 Tom Davies rated it 4 of 5 stars

Some of Dawkins post Selfish Gene works can feel as though they are covering the same ground, but not The Ancestor's Tale. I was fascinated.

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Sep 17, 2012 Rita marked it as to-read

The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
2004, nearly 700 pp

I read several parts of this book [checked out from Naturalis library] before my trip to the U.S. but did not have time to read more. It was quite interesting, though his innovative ordering of the chapters took me a long time to get used to. "Ancestors" made me think it was going to be the evolution of human beings, or at least of primates -- which is what I seem to find more fun to read about. But no, those occupy onl...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Kwinder rated it 5 of 5 stars

A journey that end in one of my best sources for "did you know" wonderment in humans, animal and all the bits that came before. Have you ever considered why a cell blast that has identical cells splitting suddenly starts forming lungs, hips and a head? Or about why there are so many types eyes on living things? Dawkins answers question I never knew to ask.

I waltz with his writing. On one hand loving the way he will introduce the known science and start revealing debates in such a way that you ha...more

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Jan 11, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

"The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" is a beguiling literary trek through the taxonomy and history of life on Planet Earth; one that's led with ample eloquence by eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. In this vast tome Dawkins has crafted what is indeed the popular scientific equivalent of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", taking us along a long journey back to the dawn of life itself, approximately 4 billion years ago, via a molecular phylogeny designed by his...more "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution" is a beguiling literary trek through the taxonomy and history of life on Planet Earth; one that's led with ample eloquence by eminent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. In this vast tome Dawkins has crafted what is indeed the popular scientific equivalent of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", taking us along a long journey back to the dawn of life itself, approximately 4 billion years ago, via a molecular phylogeny designed by his former undergraduate student Yan Wong. But it's a long, long trek that's quite unlikely to be viewed as tedious by the reader. Here, Dawkins is truly at his most expansive, using this taxonomy to discuss the compelling issues of contemporary evolutionary theory and history, in which he covers everything from genetics, speciation, convergent evolution and mass extinctions to microevolution, sexual selection, biogeography, and the relevance of plate tectonics to past and current biogeographic distributions of organisms. Relying on Wong's intricate molecular phylogeny, Dawkins takes us along to forty branching points - previous geological moments - in that phylogeny, where we meet the "concestor" - the last common ancestor - of all organisms at that very point. It is a quite compelling, often insightful, narrative that Dawkins admits does owe much to Chaucer's legendary "The Canterbury Tales".

Dawkins doesn't hesitate to interrupt the relentless ebb and flow of his narrative in a series of individual "tales", that are designed illustrate some unique trait of a given species, and then, by mere extension, serve as the jumping off point(s) for riveting discussions on some aspect(s) of modern evolutionary biology. A classic example is the section that he devotes to the sauropsids, which consists of lizard-like and dinosaur-like (archosaurs, including birds) reptiles in the chapter entitled "Rendezvous 16". In the first of these tales, "The Galapagos Finch's Tale", Dawkins recounts the decades-long fieldwork of ecologists Peter and Rosemary Grant who have been studying microevolution in the Galapagos Finches. He focuses upon the aftermath of a severe drought in 1977 that led inevitably to sharp declines in the populations of several species, observing that those individuals in the dominant species, Geospiza fortis, who were only 5 percent larger than their peers, were the ones who survived; a classic example of "a small episode of natural selection in action, during a single year." Within the same species, the Grants and their coworkers observed selection pressures resulting not only in larger body size, but also in larger beak size too. In the chapter's next tale, "The Peacock's Tale", Dawkins emphasizes the importance of sexual selection, arguing persuasively that it may have had a role in shaping the course of human evolution, perhaps via preferential selection of females for "smarter" males. That is followed, in turn, by "The Dodo's Tale", in which Dawkins discusses not only the Dodo's extinction, but also the tendency towards flightlessness in bird species inhabiting remote oceanic islands.

While Dawkins has crafted a most compelling narrative in this vast book, "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution", is far from perfect, especially in its depiction of the fossil record. Much to my amazement, he doesn't discuss the existence of long-term stasis in the fossil record, predicted by the theory of punctuated equilibria, which has been substantiated by decades of extensive fieldwork by paleobiologists, ever since the publication of the classic 1972 paper coauthored by noted American paleobiologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould (This is a rather peculiar omission since Dawkins has been a staunch critic of punctuated equilibria.). Nor does he discuss, except only in passing, the diverse, radical differences in the compositions of marine faunas during, respectively, the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras, which have been noted for decades due to excellent fieldwork, and more recently, by excellent statistical modeling done by paleontologist Jack Sepkoski and his colleagues at the University of Chicago. And he also misses the important history of predator-prey interactions that form much of coevolution, which has been discussed admirably elsewehere by noted marine ecologist Geerat Vermeij. But, in retrospect, my criticisms of Dawkins' omissions are relatively minor, simply because he has accomplished successfully, the arduous task of making both the taxonomy and history of life a most beguiling tale. Without question, "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution", should be regarded for a long time as one of the classics of popular evolutionary biology literature.

(Reposted from my Amazon review)(less)

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Aug 31, 2011 Andy Wixon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Richard Dawkins is not the kind of person you want as an enemy - but then not many people seem that keen to be his friend, either. He's a difficult person to like - clearly hugely intelligent and knowledgeable in his field, and a brilliant communicator, but at the same time obviously a terrible old fusspot (even unto the point of pedantry), prone to smugness and elitism bordering on outright snobbishness, and utterly unable to acknowledge that there anything might exist beyond the realm of the e...more Richard Dawkins is not the kind of person you want as an enemy - but then not many people seem that keen to be his friend, either. He's a difficult person to like - clearly hugely intelligent and knowledgeable in his field, and a brilliant communicator, but at the same time obviously a terrible old fusspot (even unto the point of pedantry), prone to smugness and elitism bordering on outright snobbishness, and utterly unable to acknowledge that there anything might exist beyond the realm of the empirical.

Luckily in this book Dawkins largely restricts himself to a subject he can talk about with authority, namely the origins and development of life on Earth, with particular attention paid to that branch leading to the human race. For stylistic and philosophical reasons Dawkins presents this as a pilgrimage to the past, loosely modelled on The Canterbury Tales with himself as Chaucer (sort of).

The main thread of the book consists of a series of 'rendezvous' between our ancestors and those of other animal groups (first chimps, then gorillas, etc, back to our common ancestors with fish, insects, fungi, and so on). More often than not Dawkins uses these as hooks on which to hang illuminating digressions on evolutionary biology and other related sciences - so the Redwood's Tale explains dendrochronology (which is fairly straightforward) while the Gibbon's Tale gets into moderately advanced cladistics (for want of a more accurate word: suffice to say it's fairly heavy-going).

The nature of the book makes it a bit of a curate's egg and the closing stages are a bit... well, Dawkins himself comes clean and admits we don't know when our ancestral line diverged from that of bacteria, and the reader's heart does sink a bit when turning the page and finding yet another chapter on microscopic lifeforms in the offing. Dawkins is unmistakably Dawkins throughout - rigorously, painfully meticulous about making it clear evolution is not a teleological process one minute, moved almost to tears by memories of Douglas Adams or fantasies about sharing modern research with Darwin the next, and then bringing the whole thing to a grinding halt in a third for a rather laboured P.G. Wodehouse in-joke.

Despite all this it is, largely, a fascinating and challenging read, and if nothing else it drives home repeatedly the logical corollary to the truth of evolution: the fact that all life we currently know of comprises a single immensely extended family, of which the human race is a tiny element. Dawkins' awe and reverence for the world around us is constant throughout and makes up for whatever other flaws he may display in the course of the book. He is a great communicator and communicates his passion for nature (and evolutionary biology) with great enthusiasm and force throughout the book. (less)

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Jul 27, 2011 Joseph Sverker added it

Shelves: science-stuff, religion-science-faith-reason, atheism

Dawkins is really ingeneous when it comes to finding new ways and perspectives to explore the evolution. He is very pedagogical in this book and it is easy to follow his line of argument. He has really made me understand what the evolution is all about. I know that there is debate about the specifics, but really Dawkins must be heralded as one of the great conveyors of biology to the popular adience. He takes jabs against creationists and all theists as usual, but it is somewhat less venomous in...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Lee Harmon rated it 5 of 5 stars

While I read different genres, I only review books with a religious content. So, if I may be excused for one of my “liberal Christian rants,” let me say this: It’s a sad day when a book about evolution earns a spot on the shelves of a religion blog. It simply astounds me that half of all Americans still do not believe in evolution. The evidence is so overwhelmingly against a young earth that if Christianity is going to survive, it must pull its head out of the sand and reinterpret the Bible’s cr...more

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view all 9 comments

scott Last I heard evolution is just one meta-narrative among many. Time will rid the western world of dogmatic positivism and the "facts" of it's stories....more
07 mar. 19:59

Adam Ross Lee, I would love to work to find the answer, but I don't think its the Bible that needs fixing. It is here to fix us. Likewise it does not need rescu...more
08 mar. 13:38

Nov 19, 2010 Felix Dance rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a great story! This is Dawkins at his best, and I should know because I’ve read almost all his other works. It lacks his usual antagonistic snake-poking atheism of The God Delusion, and instead focuses purely on how life evolved, what are its mechanisms and what a wonderful world we live in. In Moby Dick Ishmael tells us that whales are a type of fish. I scoffed at this at the time, but Dawkins has shown me that he was right – for all mammals a subset of fish-kind (and reptile-kind in turn)...more

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Feb 12, 2010 Charles Bond rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great History of evolution! My favorite of Dawkins' books, because it processes every little peice of information, leaving no rock unturned. Being 700 or so pages it took me a while to finish it, but my hours were not wasted. It goes through every known evolutionary split from us now, to billions of years ago with some of the first life on earth. It covers the full spread of biological diversity and the different inventions of nature, like how a Platypus uses electromagnetic waves to detect smal...more

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Jun 28, 2009 Ringthebells rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed-from-a-friend

I loved this book! I learned so much from it -- my knowledge of evolutionary biology pretty much stopped at a general high school biology course taken 14 years ago, so Dawkins really took me on a whirlwind tour. I had no idea that mice are more closely related to us than they are to cats, for instance!

I liked the narrative conceit, too, that we humans are pilgrims travelling backwards along our family tree, meeting up with the other living "pilgrims" at points of common ancestry. It made for an...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm about half way through.
This book has an innovative but boring/inane plot, just as did it's predecsssor, Pilgrim's Progress. Also like that novel, this one shines in it's anecdotes:

* Peacock tails and other sexually selected traits are just runaway instabilities.
* The platypus has ultra-sensitive lightning detection in it's bill: it can sense your muscles twitching.
* Some birds and turtles can see FOUR primary colors.
* You have Eve's mitochondria (...and Adam's Y chromasome, duh.)
* Swifts can...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Hariseldon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

The writer may have won the best award for writing most easily understandable science books, but I don't think along the same lines as the awarding comitte. He likes to delve into anecdotes that has a distant relation with the chapters's main point too much.Those little tidbits of information are often interesting, and he is a talented writer.I could picture him writing a corner in a newspaper, and daily keeping and eye on him. But while reading this book I often lost the thread of general idea,...more

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Jun 09, 2013 Johan rated it 4 of 5 stars

While parts of this book boil down to the long list of older and older latin ancestor names and some of their traits that is the premise of the book, some of its little forays into random tangents still make it a pretty inspiring read.

An interesting factoid that never occurred to me, for instance: if we'd ever manage to burn all the fossil fuels and other biomass that did not get fully decomposed and recycled, we would no longer have an oxygen atmosphere, but revert to the reducing carbon-dioxid...more

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Jan 25, 2013 Cesare Borgia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I only give this extremely long winded book a three star rating 'cause out of all of Richard Dawkins' books I've read so far, this has some educational value. I find him extremely tedious, arrogant, pretentious and the fact that when pressed on the question of creation he'll negate the concept of God but will embrace some weird "Alien genetic intervention" just rubs me the wrong way. Great poster boy for atheism and anti-theism, scientifically speaking he's got the lingo down and at times he can...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Stefan Matei rated it 5 of 5 stars

Geneticists tell us that every single person on Earth is at the least 50th cousins with every other person on Earth. On a broader scale two closely related species can be considered cousins; and it is this broad sense of the word "cousin" I'd like to make use of below.

Throughout his tales Dawkins exposes the attempts to coexist between cousins in an ever changing habitat. As it turns out, these involuntary attempts sometimes succeed, resulting in complex symbiotic relationships, and sometimes th...more Geneticists tell us that every single person on Earth is at the least 50th cousins with every other person on Earth. On a broader scale two closely related species can be considered cousins; and it is this broad sense of the word "cousin" I'd like to make use of below.

Throughout his tales Dawkins exposes the attempts to coexist between cousins in an ever changing habitat. As it turns out, these involuntary attempts sometimes succeed, resulting in complex symbiotic relationships, and sometimes they end up taking whole species out of existence. But they are always an evolutionary arms race for survival.

As our pilgrimage advances back in time, we meet more and more cousins converging at each rendezvous point. I call it "our" pilgrimage although, as Dawkins puts it, this journey could have started from the point of view of any other existing species. At Rendezvous Point 1 we, human pilgrims, join our evolutionary cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos. We shall later meet other mammals, followed by the other vertebrates, invertebrates, all the way back to meeting our chlorophyll dependent cousins, the plants.

Although the journey back in time will have many stops with unfamiliar Latin sounding names, Dawkins does a great job of always keeping you updated and clear about where you are along the pilgrimage -- you know... just in case you don't have a doctorate in zoology. At each rendezvous point, the author recounts interesting tales concerning the cousin animals which are about to join the band of pilgrims. Every newly recruited species, genus or family has its own peculiar features, often ones that are relevant to our human anatomy or otherwise interesting for humans.

After a total of 40 Rendezvous Points our pilgrimage culminates with the eubacteria, the ancestor of all surviving organisms.

"The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life" is a history of life, a history of life going backwards in the form of an epic pilgrimage. Along the way, any of our cousin pilgrims can tell a tale. And it's those tales that form the main substance of the book. (less)

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Feb 09, 2012 Eppursimuov3 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“Why would a Christian recommend any book by Richard Dawkins?!” you might ask. Well, when he’s not spewing out anti-religious, ultra-fundamentalist atheistic propaganda, he does come across as a really witty and brilliant writer! I commend Richard Dawkins for his restraint, making sure that this book focuses strictly on the science of evolution rather than on his own metaphysical conclusions. It is an engaging read on the history of evolution of life on earth. But what makes it unique is the way...more

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“My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.” — 24 people liked it

“More poignant for us, at Laetoli in Tanzania are the companionable footprints of three real hominids, probably Australopithecus afarensis, walking together 3.6 million years ago in what was then fresh volcanic ash. Who does not wonder what these individuals were to each other, whether they held hands or even talked, and what forgotten errand they shared in a Pliocene dawn?” — 7 people liked it

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