CHAPTER 1
A Tahitian Prelude
Art, Myth, and Science .......................................... 1
Gauguin's Testament ............................................. 2
The Myth of Eden ................................................ 4
Art and Mythos .................................................. 6
Mythos and Logos ................................................ 9
A Bit of Semantics ............................................. 11
CHAPTER 2
Bridging the Generation Gap
The Physical Basis of Ancestor-Descendant Relationship ......... 13
Bloodlines ..................................................... 14
Vapors, Little Worms, and Eggs ................................. 16
The Homunculus Hypothesis ...................................... 17
The Germ Line .................................................. 20
From Gemmules to Pustules ...................................... 24
From Miescher to Escher ........................................ 27
Omnis DNA e DNA ................................................ 31
The Informer and the Replicator ................................ 33
The Teleporter ................................................. 34
CHAPTER 3
Crane's Foot
Biological Meaning of Descent .................................. 39
A Show of Eight Kings .......................................... 40
Adam's Descendants and Darwin's Ancestors ...................... 42
Grand Unifications ............................................. 44
The Floppy Discs of Heredity ................................... 47
Urdur, Verdandi, Skuld ......................................... 50
The Greek χ Conundrum .......................................... 53
Time Travel of a Carolingian Chromosome ........................ 55
A Celtic Heirloom .............................................. 57
Taking a Dip in a Gene Pool .................................... 59
The Circle and the Y ........................................... 60
CHAPTER 4
Klados and Phylé
The Molecular Nature of Evolution .............................. 67
And Everything has Changed so Much in Me ....................... 68
In Tyche's Realm ............................................... 69
The Evolution of Evolution... .................................. 71
... and the Evolution of Revolution ............................ 73
A Tale of Two Pools ............................................ 74
The Elegant Euphemisms of Algebra .............................. 75
In the Realm of Antecedent Causes .............................. 82
Sports on a Neutral Territory .................................. 86
The Clock Symphony ............................................. 90
CHAPTERS 5
The Painted Tree
Methods of Phylogenetic Reconstruction ......................... 95
Molecular Archives ............................................. 96
Tribal History ................................................ 101
What's Hidden Under the Surface? .............................. 104
Horse Kicks and Monsieur le Baron ............................. 105
The Art of Drawing a Tree ..................................... 109
MP, ML, ME, and NJ ............................................ 112
Catching a Liar ............................................... 120
Fishing for the Truth ......................................... 123
CHAPTER 6
The Tree of Life
From the Root to the Crown .................................... 125
The Loneliness of a Long Perduring Tree ....................... 126
The Woesian Revolution ........................................ 129
The Three Domains of Life ..................................... 132
The Search for the Root ....................................... 135
The Pastiched Genomes ......................................... 137
Have Transposon, Will Travel .................................. 140
Worlds Apart .................................................. 142
The Prokaryote Success Story .................................. 144
The Advantage of Being a Eukaryote ............................ 146
The Rise of the Eukaryotes .................................... 147
The Murmuring of Leaves ....................................... 149
CHAPTER 7
The Rise of the Metazoan Tribes
The New Phylogeny of the Animal Kingdom ....................... 151
Natural And Unnatural Groupings ............................... 152
From Colonialism to Socialism ................................. 154
Thy Sister, the Mushroom ...................................... 155
The Tribes of the Animal Kingdom .............................. 157
Metamorphoses for a Cellular Orchestra ........................ 159
The Testimony of the Cytoplasmic Granules ..................... 164
Tradition and the New Look .................................... 167
The Columnists ................................................ 170
A Ribonucleic Hangover? ....................................... 172
CHAPTER 8
Our Place in Nature
The Closest Living Relative ................................... 175
The First Family .............................................. 176
Clash of Philosophies over Noses .............................. 186
The Deposition of Blood Globules .............................. 190
The First among the First? .................................... 194
Appearance is not Everything .................................. 197
The Question of Questions: Who is our Sister? ................. 205
And Roaches will Inherit the Earth ............................ 210
CHAPTER 9
Of Time and the Tree
The Time Scale of Evolution ................................... 215
The Tree Rings of Evolution ................................... 216
A Rock Concert ................................................ 219
A Calendar of Earth's History ................................. 221
The Clock in the Rock ......................................... 227
The Clock in the Molecule ..................................... 230
Shoemaker's Last .............................................. 236
The Thousand and One Clocks ................................... 240
Time is Relative .............................................. 248
CHAPTER 10
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Hominids and the Origin of Homo sapiens ....................... 249
The Records of Weather-Exposed Skeletons ...................... 250
A Restless Species ............................................ 263
Where Numbers Count ........................................... 268
Numbers into Trees ............................................ 271
First Trees of a Forest ....................................... 273
Circus Performance Featuring Eve .............................. 276
The Logbook of the Y Chromosome ............................... 282
The X-rated Files ............................................. 286
Opening the A files ........................................... 289
Motifs From the Appassionata .................................. 292
Tales of Baron von Münchausen... .............................. 294
...and the Tale from the Neandertal ........................... 301
Outside the Realm of Possibility .............................. 308
Groping Our Way in the Clouds ................................. 314
CHAPTER 11
Through the Neck of a Bottle
The Genesis and the Genetic Nature of Homo sapiens ............ 317
The Oracle of the Holy Bottle ................................. 318
Queen Victoria's Fishes... .................................... 323
... and the Birds of the Tortoise Islands ..................... 326
A Just So Story ............................................... 330
N end Ne ...................................................... 336
The Praise of Diversity ....................................... 340
Virtual Piranhas .............................................. 342
The Remarkable Theta .......................................... 350
Identical or Different, That is the Question .................. 351
A Camel Through the Eye of a Needle? .......................... 352
A Major in the Army of Compatibles ............................ 355
Couture For a Pool ............................................ 359
Necks of Different Size ....................................... 366
Be Fruitful and Multiply ...................................... 367
CHAPTER 12
Who Are We? Where are We Going?
The Present Condition and the Future of Our Species ........... 371
Homo destructus ............................................... 372
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ........................... 374
Après nous le déluge? ......................................... 378
Patriotism, Nationalism, Racism ............................... 381
What, if Anything, is a Race? ................................. 382
Homo intolerans ............................................... 391
Toward Universal Mingling ..................................... 392
Homo futurus .................................................. 396
The Oracles Are Dumb .......................................... 398
APPENDIX ONE .................................................. 402
APPENDIX TWO .................................................. 408
APPENDIX THREE ................................................ 415
APPENDIX FOUR ................................................. 418
APPENDIX FIVE ................................................. 424
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING ................................... 429
ILLUSTRATION AND QUOTATION CREDITS ............................ 441
INDEX ......................................................... 445
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