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

Richard Dawkins · Yan Wong

Sep 2016 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

The renowned biologist and thinker Richard Dawkins presents his most expansive work in this revised edition that offers a comprehensive look at evolution.

Loosely based on the form of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dawkins's tale takes us modern humans back through four billion years of life on our planet. As the pilgrimage progresses, we join with other organisms at the forty "rendezvous points" where we find a common ancestor. The band of pilgrims swells into a vast crowd as we join first with other primates, then with other mammals, and so on back to the first primordial organism.

Dawkins's brilliant, inventive approach allows us to view the connections between ourselves and all other life in a bracingly novel way. It also lets him shed bright new light on the most compelling aspects of evolutionary history and theory: sexual selection, speciation, convergent evolution, extinction, genetics, plate tectonics, geographical dispersal, and more.

The Ancestor's Tale is at once a far-reaching survey of the latest, best thinking on biology and a fascinating history of life on Earth. Here Dawkins shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.

Ratings and reviews

Fabulous! This is Richard Dawkins' most comprehensive take on evolution, where he begins with humans and slowly goes back in time, one common ancestor at a time, to show our relationship with all the animals around us. A highly skimmed version of this must be compulsory reading for high school kids. The sheer joy of knowing the details in how we are related, and the multiple sub-essays in each chapter make this a joyous read. It took me a few months to completely finish the book, do read it parallely with other books as it is too long.

Some e-book conversion problems, especially with regards to images and indistinguishable footnotes. But the contents should be high school curriculum, and is exceptionally well picked and presented.

Absolutely enjoyed it!

About the author

RICHARD DAWKINS is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. He is the author of 15 books includingUnweaving the Rainbow, A Devil’s Chaplain, and The God Delusion.Dawkins lives in Oxford.,