Pandoras Seed, Spencer Wells
Pandoras Seed, Spencer Wells
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Pandora's Seed
The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization

Author: Spencer Wells

Narrator: Spencer Wells

Unabridged: 6 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/08/2010


Synopsis

This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.

What do terrorism, pandemic disease, and global warming have in common? To find the answer we need to go back ten millennia, to the wheat fields of the Fertile Crescent and the rice paddies of southern China. It was at that point that our species made a radical shift in its way of life. We had spent millions of years of evolution eking out a living as hunter-gatherers. When we learned how to control our food supply, though, we became as gods—we controlled the world rather than it controlling us. But with godliness comes responsibility. By sowing seeds thousands of years ago, we were also sowing a new culture—one that has come with many unforeseen costs.

Taking us on a 10,000-year tour of human history and a globe-trotting fact-finding mission, Pandora's Seed charts the rise to power of Homo agriculturis and the effect this radical shift in lifestyle has had on us.

Focusing on three key trends as the final stages of the agricultural population explosion play out over this century, Wells speculates on the significance of our newfound ability to modify our genomes to better suit our unnatural culture, fast-forwarding our biological adaptation to the world we have created. But what do we stand to lose in the process? Climate change, a direct result of billions of people living in a culture of excess accumulation, threatens the global social and ecological fabric. It will force a key shift in our behavior, as we learn to take the welfare of future generations into account. Finally, the rise of religious fundamentalism over the past half-century is explained as part of a backlash against many of the trends set in motion by the agricultural population explosion and its inherent inequality. Ultimately, the world's present state of crisis will force us to evolve culturally, but can we self-correct our culture to solve these problems that we ourselves, in our race to succeed, have caused?

About Spencer Wells

Spencer Wells is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and the director of the Genographic Project. After studying under genetic pioneer Luigi Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford University, Spencer began an unusual career that mixes science, writing, and filmmaking. His acclaimed first book, The Journey of Man, combined his own DNA research with the work of archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleoclimatologists, and linguists to show how modern humans came to populate the planet. He is also the author of Deep Ancestry.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Will on January 11, 2023

In a 2006 interview with Conservation Biology, geneticist, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and head of NatGeo’s Genographic Project, Spencer Wells said that in various ways people todayare mismatched with the culture we’ve created in the last 10,000 years. And where are we going in the fu......more

Goodreads review by Terence on July 16, 2011

Spencer Wells argues in Pandora’s Seed that there are two critical events in humanity’s (relatively) recent past that have pushed us onto the path leading to modern civilization. Two cusps that have led to the marvels we enjoy today, as well as the horrors (which explains the book’s subtitle: “The U......more

Goodreads review by Carlos on August 06, 2014

I really enjoyed this book. Especially the center chapters where he was discussing the social issues that came from the development civilization. In the chapter "Demented", his brief treatment of mental illness was one of the most compelling from an evolutionary perspective that I have read, in that......more

Goodreads review by Richard on March 23, 2015

Spencer Wells is a geneticist who gathers DNA samples from around the world and uses them to analyze evolutionary history. Mutations occur from time to time, and they provide landmarks in our genetic history. Following a mutation, the new characteristic is passed along to future generations. A regio......more