Thomas Trappe – författare

Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics—archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology—which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. This Anatolian farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of people with contemporary European ancestry. Archaeogenetics has also revealed that indigenous North and South Americans, though long thought to have been East Asian, also share DNA with contemporary Europeans. Krause and Trappe vividly introduce us to the prehistoric cultures of the ancient Europeans: the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved flutes and animal and human forms from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe’s most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. Genetics has earned a reputation for smuggling racist ideologies into science, but cutting-edge science makes nonsense of eugenics and “pure” bloodlines. Immigration and genetic exchanges have always defined our species; who we are is a question of culture, not biological inheritance. This revelatory book offers us an entirely new way to understand ourselves, both past and present.

Brought to you by Penguin. Humanity has often found itself on the precipice. We''ve survived and thrived because we''ve never stopped moving...In this eye-opening book, Johannes Krause, Chair of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Humanity, offers a new way of understanding our past, present and future.Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors'' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, Krause charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival, culminating in the triumph of Homo Sapiens as we swept through Europe and beyond in successive waves of migration - developing everything from language, the patriarchy, disease, art and a love of pets as we did so.We also meet our ancestors, from those many of us have heard of - such as Homo Erectus and the Neanderthals - to the wildly unfamiliar but no less real: the recently discovered Denisovans, who ranged across Asia and, like humans, interbred with Neanderthals; the Aurignacians, skilled artists who, 40,000 years ago, brought about an extraordinary transformation in what our species could invent and create; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt did; and the Gravettians, big game hunters who were Europe''s most successful early settlers until they perished in the face of the toughest opponent humanity had ever faced: the ice age.As well as being a radical new telling of our shared story, this book is a reminder that the global problems that keep us awake at night - climate catastrophe; the sudden emergence of deadly epidemics; refugee crises; ethnic conflict; over-population - are all things we''ve faced, and overcome, before.''Stops you dead in your tracks ... An absolute revelation'' Sue Black, bestselling author of All That Remains© Johannes Krause 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Humans are the most intelligent beings this planet has ever produced. But how is it that we can travel into space, cure diseases and decode the fundamentals of life, and at the same time find ourselves faced with an existential crisis that threatens to overwhelm us? What lies behind this uncharacteristic failure to master the most important challenge of our existence?

In this compelling book, the leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and the journalist Thomas Trappe investigate what DNA can tell us about how we got where we are and what our future might be. They show how the first humans were defeated again and again and suffered fatal setbacks, and how Homo sapiens succeeded in conquering continents, overcoming natural borders, and bringing other species under its control. But the genetic blueprint that enabled us to get to the place where we are today had one flaw: it didn’t factor in planetary boundaries. Now that we are approaching those boundaries for the first time after millions of years of evolution, an urgent question arises: can we learn to live within the available planetary limits, or are we doomed by our DNA to continue to expand, consume, and absorb the resources around us to the point of exhaustion, consigning ourselves and other species to extinction? Has our seemingly unstoppable rise met its ultimate end?

While the looming climate crisis does not augur well for humanity’s capacity to adapt to the new situation in which it finds itself, we are not at the mercy of our DNA – or at least we don’t have to be. But can we harness the lessons of the past to survive the present?Now available as an audiobook.