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The Ancestor's Tale Book review The ancestor’s tale A pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution Richard Dawkins Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 2004. 673 pp. $28.00. ISBN: 0-618-00583-8 (hardcover). Reviewed by Jody Hey Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA. E-mail: [email protected] For a secular version of the greatest story taken to visit a particular extant species reader becomes increasingly acquainted ever told, it is hard to do better than the that serves the purpose of introducing an with cases of evolutionary convergence, history of life on earth. The evolutionary interesting evolutionary tale. Thus we have where similar organismal traits have diversification that spans 3 billion years, the tale of the axolotl, the giant salaman- evolved multiple times. Having explored from life’s murky chemical beginnings to der that exhibits an unusual mix of larval diversity and adaptation with myriad the extraordinarily diverse biosphere we traits (aquatic life style, including gills) examples, Dawkins provides an exception- have today, surely deserves an eloquent and adult traits (sexual maturity). More al discourse on evolutionary progress and telling. But could one book possibly do importantly, we learn about the evolu- inevitability. Do you wonder that some- justice to that tremendous time frame, to tion of paedomorphosis (i.e., retention of thing as complex and seemingly irreduc- all the Darwinian complexities of the pro- juvenile traits in the adult) in many other ible as an eye could evolve by Darwinian cess, and to the great questions that come examples and are provided a discussion of selection? In fact, eyes are an evolution- up as we include ourselves in that history? the circumstances of and implications for ary no-brainer, so to speak, given a lot of Yes indeed. Richard Dawkins’s The ancestor’s species that have taken this path. time in a world bathed in sunlight. Eyes of tale: a pilgrimage to the dawn of evolution is an Another side trip Dawkins takes the various types, including many camera-like extraordinary work that meets all of those reader on is the tale of the brine shrimp, eyes such as our own, have evolved inde- challenges and many others. which has evolved to swim on its back, pendently over 40 times. Another striking If you have read some of Dawkins’s previ- upside down with respect to the way most sensory adaptation is echolocation. In ous books, then you know he writes engag- crustacea swim. This tale, like many oth- this case there are four independent cases ingly on evolutionary topics. With a highly ers in the book, focuses only partly on the (bats, toothed whales, oilbirds, and cave self-assured style, he effortlessly draws main subject on the way to making a larger swiftlets) in which echolocation is known insightful connections among disparate point about evolutionary processes. In this to have evolved. notions, trapping the curiosity of readers case, we also learn about the upside-down A creative wordsmith and a master of before they know what’s coming. catfish, and Dawkins walks us through the Darwinian thinking, Dawkins writes in Rather than proceeding chronologically, probable scenario of how evolution could a style laden with genial arrogance. This Dawkins relates the history of life from lead to such a major switch in lifestyle. aspect of his work is curious. Dawkins so a peculiar, though quite effective, back- Given its travelogue aspect, one might clearly wants the reader to understand how wards perspective. The author deliberately suppose that the book is more about the evolution works, and yet he does not seem borrows from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales actual history of life and less about evolu- to see that a charismatic style might be and employs the device of a band of time tionary mechanisms than The selfish gene or counterproductive. Dawkins understands travelers. At first the travelers include only Dawkins’s other previous books. But this evolution exceptionally well, and he might the author and reader, but as we proceed turns out not to be the case at all. Yes, you pass that knowledge on to us better if we back in time we meet up with the common will read some embryology and receive a had just a little less of him. ancestors of the human species and other good grounding in how evolutionary trees An unfortunate editorial oversight groups of organisms. Thus, going back are constructed, and you will read more is seen in the text’s occasional straying six million years, we arrive at the ancestral names of organisms and parts of organisms into political commentary. Worse still, species that we share with the two spe- than you can remember, but the real lesson Dawkins at one point chastises Richard cies of chimpanzee. At this junction, as at of this book — as always with Dawkins’s Lewontin, the great population geneticist, most, Dawkins summarizes what is known work — is about the way in which the pro- for sometimes interjecting politics into about the ancestor’s time and what might cess of natural selection led to the extraor- scientific discourse. This little touch of be surmised about its form and lifestyle, dinary adaptations that we find among dif- hypocrisy is hard to miss if you read the based on molecular clocks, fossil evidence, ferent kinds of organisms. entire volume. But such lapses amount and arguments from parsimony. Also, at One of the most interesting parts of to a few dozen words in a weighty, truly each juncture, side trips to the present are the story emerges later in the book, as the wonderful book. 1680 The Journal of Clinical Investigation http://www.jci.org Volume 115 Number 7 July 2005.
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