Previously published as the first volume of The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, this work is devoted exclusively to prehistoric migration, covering all periods and places from the first hominin migrations out of Africa through the end of prehistory.
-Presents interdisciplinary coverage of this topic, including scholarship from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, genetics, biology, linguistics, and more
Includes contributions from a diverse international team of authors, representing 17 countries and a variety of disciplines
-Divided into two sections, covering the Pleistocene and Holocene; each section examines human migration through chapters that focus on different regional and disciplinary lenses

Award-winning, celebrated New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer presents a history of our understanding of heredity in this sweeping, resonating overview of a force that shaped human society–a force set to shape our future even more radically.
She Has Her Mother’s Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities. . . .
But, Zimmer writes, “Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are–our appearance, our height, our penchants–in inconceivably subtle ways.” Heredity isn’t just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors–using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates–but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer’s lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.
Weaving historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world’s best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.

本著作主要具有一种批判性(kritischen)的特征。许多人对此并不满意，因为他们只是需要正面的、能够直接适用的真理，而并不关心它们获得的方式以及可能存在的对立。如果我们能够只让清晰的、单一的真理对于我们产生绝对的影响，并且能够不受干扰地发展而取得新的知识，我们的精神生活就会非常容易和舒适。但许多渣滓却包围并且阻碍着我们，这些渣滓由错误的或者部分正确的概念和观点组成，因此我们必须自己开辟道路。命运使得我们担负起许多不必要的负累，我们要为此和命运抗争吗?我们必须要顺从它，将之作为我们精神存在的必要条件，但这里却并不缺少丰富的果实这些果实是作为我们劳动的报酬而从这种必要性中产生出来的。在此之中，我们的精神力量得到了全面的培养，我们通过与错之间的斗争而获得的每个真理，就会在更高的意义上成为我们的财富，并且较之以下情形，即我们从其他人那里被动地和轻易地获得这些真理，在前一种情形中，这些真理会被证实更为富有成果。
本著作的上述批判性特征主要在以下具体应用中表现出来。首先，它几乎完全体现于以下情形，即所进行的研究并不罕见地仅仅得出单纯否定的结果；此情形可能在于，罗马法制度被证明已经消亡，因此我们的法状态对此非常陌生，或者在我们的法体系中，现代的法学家描述了由于错误理解而被引入的毫无根据的概念和学说观点。